Vague religious references and a group of foreboding animals populate “Night of the Mules.”

Track: “Night of the Mules”
Album: Chile de Árbol (1993) and Protein Source of the Future…Now! (1999)

Chile de Árbol is a strange collection. One song is about the end of the world and the Easter Bunny, another is about Billy the Kid, and the other three are challenging to approach even at a basic level. “Night of the Mules” seems to be about generalized menace, with only the title to suggest where the source of said menace lies.

A few years ago John Darnielle opened a concert with “Night of the Mules.” He’s said recently that he likes to open shows with old or rare songs so few people in the crowd will know the first one. It’s a powerful effect, and it usually quiets the crowd as people try to figure out what they’re listening to or if they’ve heard it before. “Night of the Mules” doesn’t need much updating to fit in with a modern Mountain Goats show. It’s all fierce guitar and sneers, so it’s a perfect wake-the-crowd-up jam to hear up top.

The only commentary I can find is one quote where John Darnielle says the song is about an ending that will come for everyone. Kyle Barbour, author of The Annotated Mountain Goats, suggests that it’s a Biblical song because of the presence of kings, holly, and mistletoe, but he also hears “praying” in the second verse where I hear “braying.” That’s as good of an answer as anything I can come up with, but I’m more comfortable calling this a generalized view of an end times. The religious reading is backed up by the opening sample from Genesis about Abraham’s attempt to save the city of Sodom if ten good men exist there, but mules coming to destroy everything seems more like a John Darnielle original idea to me.