In the cornfields of Iowa, clues begin to mount but may not help for the narrator in “Ambivalent Landscape Z.”

Track: “Ambivalent Landscape Z”
Album: Undercard (2010)

John Darnielle wrote a novel called “Universal Harvester” that’s worth your time, but you’ve probably already read it if you’re reading something like this. The phrase showed up in “Ambivalent Landscape Z” nearly a decade earlier as a narrator spoke of the “cold gaze of the Universal Harvester.” The book has overshadowed the company, as far as Google searches go, but Universal Harvester was a company that made farming equipment in Iowa that was acquired by another company that makes farming equipment in Iowa. The company that acquired them said they weren’t going to change anything. I don’t know if that turned out to be true or not.

Both the novel and “Ambivalent Landscape Z” take place in the fields of Iowa. This is the “sequel,” I suppose, to “Malevolent Cityscape X” and “Malevolent Seascape Y,” though I’m not sure there’s enough of a line to draw through all three that it matters. In this song, one character tries to track another one and fails to do so, both emotionally and physically. “You threw your car keys away,” they note, “you left a bunch of dummy footprints on the clay.” This is someone who definitely does not want to be followed, but that’s not going to stop some people.

All of this happens, but then we have the chorus. “I’ll never see you again // but until then” is the kind of contradiction that a John Darnielle narrator loves. This person is piecing together a faked crime scene and losing faith that it’s one they can solve, even with the information that it’s not real. Who among us hasn’t felt that way, to say nothing of needing a fallout shelter to “fall out in.” The delivery is stellar, and it’s really a standout in the Extra Glenns/Lens catalog.