John Darnielle breaks out the old looping Casio for “The Wooded Hills Along the Black Sea”.

Track: “The Wooded Hills Along the Black Sea”
Album: Songs for Pierre Chuvin (2020)

You can watch John Darnielle play the Casio that you hear in “The Wooded Hills Along the Black Sea” in this brief Instagram video. He said that this song is “practically indistinguishable from a 1994 song” except for the bridge. You really do feel that, even more than the others on the album, as this feels like it would make sense along some of the older jams about seals and Chino and all that. If you know, then you know.

The song follows people in exile from the empire, most clearly in the best lines: “the burden of exile // gets easy to bear // sometimes forget // there’s cities down there.” After several songs about living under the thumb of empire, “The Wooded Hills Along the Black Sea” shows us another way people can rebel. You don’t have to spit food down your sleeve and look at the columns, you can go out into the woods and run. Obviously the word “exile” suggests that maybe it wasn’t that deliberate a choice, but whatever led to the leaving, these people have left.

The Casio is what makes this song notable. It’s the only one on the album that eschews the guitar for the odd, looping keyboard sound that Darnielle used sparingly on early stuff. It evokes a nostalgia that is more important than the sound itself. It’ll never be my favorite song on the album, but what an amazing thing to hear, decades later. What a testament to Darnielle’s songwriting that it still feels so right.