“Pink and Blue” asks us to consider not just what came before the events of the song, but what came before that.

Track: “Pink and Blue”
Album: All Hail West Texas (2002)

John Darnielle says that he doesn’t play “Pink and Blue” live because the album version is the definitive one. I don’t have the data on this, but that doesn’t seem like a statement he makes very often. “Pink and Blue” is a great song, from a great album, and I don’t know that I ever noticed the lack of live versions until he pointed it out. I can see what he means, though, and I don’t know how you’d improve on this.

Two nine-day-old twins are abandoned and we see a moment of their lives. “Nice new clothes on you and an old carboard produce box for a cradle” is a beautiful image, but a sad statement at the same time. This is as positive a spin on it as you can put, but the circumstances around what led to this moment lingers in the background. John Darnielle adds fun color about crows talking politics and the scenery outside to distract from the central image. Even still, we’re back to the twins in the box and we’re asked to think, however briefly, about what world can abandon the most vulnerable.

A lot of Mountain Goats songs are about this idea. “Pink and Blue” is a pretty little song that doesn’t go very deep, but that’s exactly the point. “Counterfeit Florida Plates” doesn’t directly ask us to consider the mental health aspect of homelessness, but it does if you spend some time under the surface. In the same way, “Pink and Blue” is a sweet-enough way into a much more complicated, desperate reality. We don’t spend any time on what led to this and that’s not the point. It’s about the circumstances that led to that choice that matter.