http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZdPN4rD9EWk

John Darnielle calls “Going to Spain” one of the saddest songs he’s ever written, and he sells it with a pained delivery.

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

There are “early” songs and then there’s The Hound Chronicles. There’s officially an album before it, but The Hound Chronicles feels like the first real complete release. Songs like “The Garden Song” and “Going to Chino” are perfect bridges between what the original sound of the Mountain Goats was and the themes that the band still loves to explore. There’s always room for the weirdest of the early songs, but it’s in the ones that would still sound reasonable now (cleaned up a little, of course) that you can hear the eternal John Darnielle. From “Going to Alaska” on the first album to Beat the Champ‘s opener “Southwestern Territory,” Darnielle’s interest in the downtrodden has never waned.

“Going to Spain” is a little more on-the-nose than the material on Get Lonely, the modern breakup album, but not by much. “You’re gonna leave me now // but I don’t care” and “go on and leave me // I don’t care anymore” are classic boasts from a hurt lover, but they hit even harder here because Darnielle delivers them full of pain rather than anger. It’s a narrator that’s trying to act tough, not someone trying to wound their partner. “I see you hold his hand // I see you wave goodbye” is sad, but “I don’t know you anymore // so I’m not going to cry now” is even sadder because it’s a lie.

With the rest of the catalog the way it is, it would be possible to wonder what this person has done to deserve this fate. With no judgement offered in the song either way, it’s not possible for us to attribute blame. That keeps this song one of the saddest in the collection, and you can feel it in how hard Darnielle tries to keep it together when he plays it.