“Attention All Pickpockets” is about trying to keep it all together and the hope that someone else might help you do it.

Track: “Attention All Pickpockets”
Album: Letter From Belgium (2004)

John Darnielle generally prefers to be vague about song meanings. That’s part of what makes the journey through the catalog so interesting, because it’s less about trying to find the right answers and more about making connections that work for you. If you want to think “The Monkey Song” isn’t about a monkey, well, go for it. There’s no primary text to stop you.

“Attention All Pickpockets” is different. It’s indisputably about the same characters that show up in “Dilaudid” on The Sunset Tree, as John Darnielle has confirmed. He calls this song from the three-song EP Letter From Belgium a “study” for developing the characters. In “Broom People” they deal with their teenage years and take solace in sex. By “Dilaudid” they’re into hard drugs and the things that go along with them. “Attention All Pickpockets” is a kind of middle point between the two.

The title comes from a deliberate misinterpretation of a sign John Darnielle saw in Paris that warned him about pickpockets. He recorded this song at a festival there and you can hear the joy in the other musicians as they chime in for the chorus. It sounds exuberant at first, but the lyrics reveal the transition. The characters are “not the same people that our old friends knew” but what are they now? “Broom People” ends with a primal scream and the statement that one person can be enough to save you, but “Attention All Pickpockets” sounds more like a desperate plea from one person to another in the hopes that they continue their saving. Since “Dilaudid” follows this we know they stay together, but is that really the best outcome for everyone involved?