We’re asked to consider a rock really, really deeply, but also why we’re considering it, in “Distant Stations.”

Track: “Distant Stations”
Album: All Hail West Texas (2002)

“Distant Stations” opens with seven lines about the narrator finding a rock. “It was a triangle with soft, rounded edges,” they tell us, and add that “it was darker than English moss.” The description goes into extreme detail. You really do not need to know this much about this rock, but you do need to understand why this person feels like this information is critical. This is a certain sort of person, you see, and they need you to hear about this triangle rock they found.

This kind of obsessive behavior could be viewed a few different ways, but it seems like it’s a way into how this person views the world. In the second verse, John Darnielle sings possibly the longest line in any of his songs with “I threw a rock at a crow who was playing in the mulch of some rose bushes by the motel office.” It’s deliberately too long and it’s uncomfortable both to sing and to hear. The result is a small tension that the narrator seems to feel about their situation. They’re wandering around a motel and throwing rocks at birds. It’s anti-social behavior and it’s not something that someone does when they’re deeply in love or satisfied.

Abstracted from “Distant Stations” this sounds like a strange story. Within the song, these are just the choices this person makes as they live a solitary life. John Darnielle says it’s about inaction and about what someone does if they have the mind of a stalker but can’t or won’t act on their fractured way of relating to people. The narrator says “I never told you where I was,” which drives home that they are waiting on someone who won’t, but also can’t, show up.