John Darnielle speaks of his home and his mentality as he wails about the selling points of both in “Going to Chino.”

Track: “Going to Chino”
Album: The Hound Chronicles (1992)

“Going to Spain” is one of the saddest songs in the two decades of Mountain Goats history, but the entire album The Hound Chronicles really has a sad feel to it. On “Going to Chino” you can hear John Darnielle’s voice crack over and over. Some listeners will find it too rough to enjoy, but that’s really the point. Early songs like “Going to Alaska” use the roughness of the recording to amplify their snarls and screams, but “Going to Chino” stands alone. John is wailing by the time he belts out “a unified school system // the likes of which you won’t find elsewhere” and the delivery is the entire point of the song.

It’s lyrically unimpressive by design. He’s singing about droll subjects because the actual setting of Chino isn’t the point. When John says he wants to “say hello to all our friends from Chino” he’s speaking to the entire cast of characters he’s created. Those characters didn’t exist to the public in 1992, but the meth addicts and alcoholic brides and scorned lovers of the Mountain Goats were real to him already and they were all from Chino.

There are good things about the area like “convenient access to the 60 freeway” and “accredited medical care down at Chino Valley Hospital,” but the Chino of the mind is a tougher place to live. You were born there and you will die there, so in this brief moment a very forlorn John Darnielle would like to extend a greeting to people who need one. After all, in his own way, he’s from Chino, too.