http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8kot3880-60

Two characters examine how they feel about a third leaving their lives in “Malevolent Seascape Y.”

Track: “Malevolent Seascape Y”
Album: Martial Arts Weekend (2002)

The Extra Glenns and The Extra Lens are the same band: John Darnielle of the Mountain Goats and Franklin Bruno of Nothing Painted Blue. The duo has released two 12-track albums and while songs like “Malevolent Seascape Y” are technically not Mountain Goats songs, the entire idea of “the Mountain Goats” is really just any band that either has John Darnielle in it or only John Darnielle in it. There are common themes and some Extra Glenns/Lens songs show up in Goats shows, so it really is a distinction without a difference. If you want to tell me “Adultery” isn’t a Mountain Goats song (and possibly the Mountain Goats song) then that’s your hill to die on.

“Malevolent Seascape Y” comes from Martial Arts Weekend, which feels like a lighter-but-still-abrasive Goats record. The closing track features a metaphor in which love is compared to a dying hospital patient, so we’re definitely in familiar territory. In this song, two people watch a ship disappear over the horizon. The ship contains a third character that is connected to the duo, but the meaning of “Seascape” is left vague. The characters are almost wistful about the situation, but we don’t really know what it all means for them.

The narrator thinks to themselves “I guess this makes it all easier // I guess it’s smooth sailing now” but they close with “I guess it never really mattered anyhow.” The only clue in the song comes up when one character gives the narrator a seashell and asks them to listen to it. The narrator hears nothing and says “I knew the three of us meant less than nothing.” Darnielle suggests that big moments don’t always come with explanations. Not all departures have lessons. Sometimes people just leave.