John Darnielle explores the dark side of ignoring your problems in “Tape Travel is Lonely.”

Track: “Tape Travel is Lonely”
Album: All Hail West Texas (2013 reissue)

There are a few things to unpack here before we even tackle the song itself. The title of “Tape Travel is Lonely” is a reference to the 2001 John Vanderslice album Time Travel is Lonely. That album is heartbreaking, especially during the title track as Vanderslice’s fictional brother tells the story of his descent into madness in Antarctica.

“Tape Travel is Lonely” is one of the previously unreleased tracks that made it onto the 2013 reissue of All Hail West Texas, and John Darnielle reveals in the liner notes that this one was cut because it ended abruptly while he was recording and he never went back to it. He doesn’t outright say it should have made the album, but he suggests it. It’s possible that the title stems from the process of digging back through old material and picturing who you were when you created the originals. Darnielle says this one didn’t have a title, so you can picture him listening to this song and appreciating the feeling his producer and collaborator Vanderslice imagined for his character in Antarctica.

The song itself is a lot of scene setting, even for the Mountain Goats. We see a “party” that’s all homegrown vegetables and sweet wine on the porch. In most songs, these would be idyllic images and we’d picture a nice night spent with friends in the country. Darnielle hammers the guitar and holds on the last word in lyrics like “the tensions build // air currents throb” to let us know this is not that kind of scene. It’s a fiercer version of “Fault Lines,” in a way, as the narrator’s building anxiety and growing drunkenness peak with a plea for the mosquitoes to suck the remaining blood from his body.