“January 31, 438” imagines that change happens on one day, with a past before it and a future after it.

Track: “January 31, 438”
Album: Songs for Pierre Chuvin (2020)

The Codex Theodosianus was published on or about January 31, 438, thus the title of “January 31, 438.” The text was an official collection of laws for Rome, but it was also an official, deliberate attempt to solidify Christianity and to be clear that the days of the pagans were done. Given the source material for Songs for Pierre Chuvin, we can tell all that without needing to go much deeper.

The lyrics show us someone in their desperation, understanding and maybe accepting that they are doomed. The album’s larger context draws the camera back even more to tell us that this is not a personal problem. This is bigger than that. Everyone who is like this narrator is on the way out, which is hammered home on every song on the album. The message is consistent.

What makes “January 31, 438” different is the specificity. I’ve said this before, but I maintain that the thing that makes a Mountain Goats song truly great is specificity. It’s when you know you’re at a specific street corner or in a specific city or dealing with one, undeniable moment, that’s when you feel the electricity. This was a day in history where everything was one way before and was another way after. As we see across the rest of the album it wasn’t really that sudden, but a song being titled like this forces us to imagine how sharp that difference might have felt to an individual person who was confronting what feels, to us, with some distance, like a long, flowing tide.