The Sunset Tree

010. Broom People

Alex Russell The Sunset Tree , , , , , , ,

“Broom People” uses specific images to talk about the general feeling of young love being the only damn thing you need.

Track: “Broom People”
Album: The Sunset Tree (2005)

Most of The Sunset Tree is a very personal look at John Darnielle’s abusive stepfather. Songs like “Lion’s Teeth,” “Dance Music,” and “Magpie” get right at the heart of the fear and the sadness of what it’s like to be young and afraid. The album is also concerned with the entirety of sad childhood in a lot of ways, and that’s where songs like “Broom People” come in.

While “You or Your Memory” and “Pale Green Things” offer John’s stepfather a chance to be a more complicated character than the brutal villain he is through most of the album, it’s in “Broom People” that we really get to know the boy himself. His stepfather doesn’t even make an appearance. The closest the song comes to the album’s dark center is in lines where he’s suggested, like “I write down good reasons to freeze to death” or the appearance of “well meaning teachers.”

“Broom People” is about the ways we hide. He’s on the record about the song and he says it’s about a girl that he slept with three times a day when he was 14 years old. She’s not Cathy, which only matters for the narrative because it’s not the same name from “This Year.” In that fact we find a little commentary on the fleeting nature of “love” as a teenager. Everything is intense immediately, but that doesn’t cut into the reality of lines like “down in your arms // in your arms, I am a wild creature.” This is a place for John to hide from a life that he can’t find any other way to process.

All of The Sunset Tree is about making the best of bad situations, but only “Broom People” ends with — at least temporarily — a happy protagonist.

001. Up the Wolves

Alex Russell The Sunset Tree , , , , , , ,

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=agbCspmBSWk

John Darnielle says it’s about “the moment in your quest for revenge when you learn to embrace the futility of it.”

Track: “Up the Wolves”
Album: The Sunset Tree (2005)

The Sunset Tree is emotionally raw. It dives deep into John’s childhood and isn’t uncomfortable holding the camera too long on a shot of abuse. In other songs he’s being directly attacked or broken down, but the meaning of “Up the Wolves” is more abstract. With stand-ins of Romulus and Remus, the founders of Rome who, according to myth, were raised by a wolf, John offers an anthem to people in tough situations. Those two waited, anxiously, secure in the knowledge that the wolf was coming home. John wants his troubled listener to know that some kind of wolf is coming home for them, too.

Every comment section about “Up the Wolves” is overrun with fans of The Walking Dead, since the song was used in an emotional moment during a recent season of the show. It’s a fitting scene, filled with catharsis and literal fire, and once you see two beloved characters give in to a foolish impulse just to keep morale high during a dark time, you understand that no other song would fit.

You may take issue with the amount of “hope” in “Up the Wolves.” It’s entirely possible that the wolf doesn’t come back. That isn’t all that important, though. Like so many songs by the Mountain Goats, it’s not about the result. It’s about the importance of recognizing that troubles may be temporary. Much like the opening lines to a more recent Goats song (“Do every stupid thing // that makes you feel alive”), the lyrics of “Up the Wolves” plead with the listener to wait for a proverbial wolf. Get yourself in “fighting trim” and “bribe the officials” when you have to, but beyond all else, don’t lose hope.