The Mountain Goats offer up a lesson about idolatry in “The Great Gold Sheep.”

Track: “The Great Gold Sheep”
Album: Getting Into Knives (2020)

What really is the appeal of an idol? “The Great Gold Sheep” continues in the trend of direct songs from Getting Into Knives, but it goes a little deeper than some of the others in that the titular sheep is not really what’s important. Our narrator here commits idolatry rather literally and calls the sheep “splendid and fine” and views themselves as above the masses because they understand the importance of it. However, they don’t explicitly call it divine.

I may be getting hung up on the wrong thing here, but part of what makes “The Great Gold Sheep” interesting to me is that this narrator is really focused on their own place in the world. They clearly revere this statue, but they live in our world (the Curtis Institute is a modern institution) and talk constantly about legacy. We think of idolatry as either a literal concept from the ancient world or an abstract concept of the modern one, but what if it’s both at the same time? This person piles up what John Darnielle has elsewhere called “temporal things” and talks about writing their name on things to “leave a lasting legacy,” but they have their priorities all wrong.

Darnielle sings this one in a sort of ghostly wail, which really drives home the whole memento mori of the thing. This person really cares about physical riches but also about the future remembering their name. You cannot really have both of them and they seem to know that, deep down, but they push forward and persist on chasing something that they can’t ever really have.