“Lakeside View Apartments Suite” holds the camera on some characters in Portland but doesn’t tell us what happens next.

Track: “Lakeside View Apartments Suite”
Album: Transcendental Youth (2012)

The Mountain Goats have played “Lakeside View Apartments Suite” in Chicago, where I live, at least eight times. I’ve seen all eight of them. I’m sure there are songs like “No Children” or “This Year” that I’ve seen more often, but it was only when I looked this one up on the wiki that I realized how ubiquitous this has been over the years. There are at least three periods where the band played it four nights in a row.

It’s really an incredible song, but it feels so self-contained. I just listened to it again and it hit me the same way it did the very first time I heard it. Some songs evolve in your mind or hit you differently at different points, but “Lakeside View Apartments Suite” isn’t one of them. Live versions carry weight differently, especially during the line about throwing up in the sink. The falsetto John Darnielle rises into when delivering that line never fails to make me take specific notice.

Transcendental Youth in general feels like it has more polish than a lot of the other albums from this era of the Mountain Goats, but that may be just my take on it. It’s not better or worse as a result, but I feel similarly about “Lakeside View Apartments Suite.” When you first hear it you will picture this cast out there in Portland and you will feel, maybe, for people in your life who are similar. It’s perfectly constructed as a story right from the jump.