The narrator of “Burned My Tongue” offers up a one-sided view of someone who left them alone on a beach in India.

Track: “Burned My Tongue”
Album: On Juhu Beach (2001)

The beach at Juhu is said to be beautiful, and it’s apparently the defining feature of the suburb of the most populous city in India. On Juhu Beach is also a suburb in a way, since it’s an out-of-print collection of five songs that originally came in a hand-sewn cover in 2001. The five songs of On Juhu Beach are all oddities, and at first glance the only tie that binds is the common element of repetition. Most of the songs feature extended use of the same line over and over, but none more than “Burned My Tongue.”

John Darnielle says “it burned my tongue” or “it burns my tongue” 12 times in the 22 lines of the song. It becomes haunting long after it’s already insistent. The narrator wants the audience to be totally aware of their pain, which is both physical and otherwise. They burn their tongue on a life-giving prayer, the name of a lover, a song they doesn’t want to sing alone, and the pain of being alone in Juhu, but also on grains cooked in butter. It might be too much to assume that it’s supposed to be funny that a person so tortured would accidentally mention one actual use of burning one’s tongue in the middle of so much dramatic language, but it certainly puts the character in perspective.

Not every narrator in a Mountain Goats song is in the right. Our hero here might be in Juhu alone, 30, and angry because of something they’ve done. They tell us “I gave you all I got // what more’ve I got to give” but that’s their opinion. We never hear anything distinct about the lost love beyond their impact on the narrator, and it’s worth considering how reliable they really are.