“Pez Dorado” reminds us that little things make up big things, but it also zooms way, way out from there.

Track: “Pez Dorado”
Album: Getting Into Knives (2020)

Both of these are oversimplifications, but the “early” Mountain Goats songs are often about two people in a challenging personal situation (that one or both of them seemingly created) and the “recent” ones are about grander things. Any band with hundreds and hundreds of songs inherently resists such statements, but songs like “Pez Dorado” speak to my point. This is a song about big things. This is about things bigger than you.

It’s, in fact, specifically about how things bigger than you can dwarf what seems important at the time. “We were here before the flood,” these tiny fish say, and despite reminders that tiny fish are vulnerable individually there are reminders in the song about how that only matters if you consider it from that perspective. It’s inherent to the individual experience that this is a tough lens to apply, but it’s an important one. You, the person you have always been and always will be, are having a difficult time or a great time or something in between. You, the part of something larger that resists the shorebirds and grows stronger because of the need to persist, are the sum of parts that you’ll never feel like are part of you.

It feels very similar to “Tidal Wave” to me, but the grander version zoomed out from how you receive that stacking, marching element of time. Maybe this feels grandiose for a song about goldfish, but I think that’s the point. It’s a juxtaposition between what we think of as a small, insubstantial thing and the reality that there’s a difference between one in the bowl and the big idea. Depending on where you’re at, maybe that’s helpful for you today.