https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1sXTLkjF8bI

The Alpha Couple takes one last look at each other with the slightest memory of the good times in “Old College Try.”

Track: “Old College Try”
Album: Tallahassee (2002)

It’s up to you to decide if you feel bad for the Alpha Couple. They get drunk and scream at each other and they persist in misery well past knowing there is no solution for their situation. “I wanna say I’m sorry // for stuff I haven’t done yet” is the sort of thing you say to someone you are not actually sorry about hurting. You know you are going to be one of the characters in “Oceanographer’s Choice” and you know you are possibly the narrator of “No Children.” John Darnielle has said before that people come up to him at live shows to say they are just like the Alpha Couple and he doesn’t know what to do with that. It’s not a thing to aspire to be, but it’s something you sometimes end up as if you aren’t careful.

“Old College Try” is as close as they get to redemption. It goes immediately worse after this and then it ends. This isn’t the last chance to save it, because it’s well past that. This is, however, the moment to recognize that you maybe could have saved it once. “In the way those eyes I’ve always loved illuminate this place // like a trashcan fire in a prison cell // like the searchlights in the parking lots of hell” is exactly this mixture. The narrator cannot actually be sweet, but they are overcome by the memory of why they once wanted to be with this person. The combination of drugs and booze and resentment is too strong now, but there was something beautiful here, once, and it is almost, almost enough just to remember it.