“Counterfeit Florida Plates” offers the listener a look into the sad life and life’s work of the insane.

Track: “Counterfeit Florida Plates”
Album: Transcendental Youth (2012)

In a way, “Counterfeit Florida Plates” is really every song the Mountain Goats have ever made. It’s the direct story of a crazy person, and you can put whatever you’d like on top of that. The narrator walks you through their madness, from stealing sunscreen from a convenience store to their life’s work of trying to spot every single fake license plate from Florida. They truly believe they’ve been tasked with his and they wait for the day when people will come ask for the data. It’s madness, but it’s a system.

“Madness” isn’t necessarily interesting on its own, but John Darnielle offers us the specifics of this person’s life and “work” to ground the character. No one in any song on Transcendental Youth has an easy time of things, but the person in “Counterfeit Florida Plates” is totally beyond help. Their plan is to wait for “the coming disaster” and their great struggle is that they can’t quite find every car they feel like they needs to find. It’s easy to feel sorry for them, but then to feel even worse when you realize that even in “success” this character will still not achieve anything.

“This may be the night my point men finally come” is the line that makes the whole song. Many Goats characters are fighting in a war that’s already been lost, but we are led to believe that this one still thinks their life has meaning. They’re missing the one trait so many other narrators have: an acknowledgement that fighting for fighting’s sake is senseless. This one still must count the cars and still must wait, hungry and cold, for people that we know aren’t ever coming.