The narrator in “Ghosts” tries, unsuccessfully, to appreciate their surroundings before exploding on someone.

Track: “Ghosts”
Album: Hail and Farewell, Gothenburg (1995)

If there’s a song that has survived from Hail and Farewell, Gothenburg, it has to be “Ghosts.” The Mountain Goats Wiki counts fifteen live performances, which is five times more than any other song on the album. I don’t know that it’s the best song on the album, but it’s certainly in the top half. The pitch-corrected version helps somewhat, as John Darnielle’s vocals in deeper tones make the narrator sound a little calmer and, almost, more considerate. That might be too far, but that’s what I get.

I think people like this one because the chorus is easy to understand: “It made me wish I was dead.” There are a handful of Mountain Goats narrators who are more direct than this, but not many of them. This one experiences a black dog that they take to be an evil portent and they experience “a familiar sun” that they say will shine forever in a familiar land, though that familiarity isn’t a positive. By the third verse they’re even calling out the view as terrific and praising the sunshine’s impact on their mood, but it all falls apart. “Five years is a long time,” they say, “and I spent five years in Sweden, dying for you.”

In another song, by another band, this might sound dramatic. It does here, I guess, but not as the word is typically used. People reach for “Ghosts” because so much of this album, and, honestly, the surrounding ones, can feel distant. That distance makes those songs complex, but sometimes you just want to snap back at someone, even when it isn’t fair. Maybe especially when it isn’t fair.