“Waving at You” is sung in a whisper, but it’s far more furious than most of the much louder songs.

Track: “Waving at You”
Album: Nothing for Juice (1996)

The Mountain Goats have significant range, but most fans will tell you their favorite songs are the screaming, foot-stomping ones. They’re the ones that bring the house down at the first, second, and (sometimes) third encores and they’re the ones people belt out on New Year’s Eve to rage against the previous and future years. You can’t think of the Mountain Goats without thinking of that death metal band in Denton or the Alpha Couple’s furious love or the speak freaks on the west coast, but there are some songs that fall outside of the norm.

John Darnielle whispers “Waving at You,” relatively speaking. He sounds far away, tinged with longing and regret. The great majority of Mountain Goats narrators are sad, but most of them aren’t at the stage of life that the “Waving at You” person sings about. John Darnielle likes characters that are in the middle of their fury or misery. Those people are easy to understand because they narrate their feelings to try to understand them. He has an entire song (“The Recognition Scene”) about the moment you realize what your situation really is. The person in “Waving at You” is several years beyond those moments.

There are other reflective Mountain Goats songs, but John Darnielle says this is one of the best of the early ones. He’s said in interviews that this one feels more real to him and that you can read his quiet delivery as the story consuming him. There’s a lot to love about yelling and screaming, but the bubbling tension in “Waving at You” that explodes only through frantic strumming comes across like catharsis denied. Our character can’t shake this habit and “Waving at You” reminds us that not every moment ends, even years later.