“Onions” is an ode to a beautiful spring morning and the things that come with the end of the coldest season.

Track: “Onions”
Album: The Coroner’s Gambit (2000)

John Darnielle doesn’t eat meat. He wrote that the original liner notes for Full Force Galesburg were “a militant vegetarian rant which, among other things, described the lives of meat-eaters as “meaningless.” He’s done benefit shows for the animal protection agency Farm Sanctuary. It would be difficult to miss this element of his personal politics, but just in case he’s got dozens of lyrical references to the beauty of the simple cow to remind you.

“Onions” paints a beautiful picture. The narrator informs us that it’s late-winter/early-spring both directly and indirectly. “Springtime’s coming,” they say, but they also watch migrations and other animal behaviors that mirror the seasonal change. It’s easy to feel a little joy yourself as you picture the cows picking up speed as they realize the world is no longer cold and is inviting to the touch again. On a surface level, it’s a sweet image that gets coupled with new onions growing to show how wonderful the world becomes and how great everyone feels when winter thaws.

It may seem a strange song for The Coroner’s Gambit, then, since the rest of the album mostly covers loss, death, and divorce. One explanation is that it’s the glimmer of hope among all the sorrow, but it may be that our narrator doesn’t have all the facts yet. “Springtime’s coming, that means you’ll be coming back around” can be read as an assumption that may not turn out to be true. The world is new again in spring and that usually means the return of this character for our narrator, but we’ll have to see if this year goes the same as years past.