A song of praise that’s filled with potential disaster, “Transjordanian Blues” fits right in with other Mountain Goats songs.

Track: “Transjordanian Blues”
Album: On Juhu Beach  (2001)

“Transjordanian Blues” has been played live more than a handful of times. In nearly all of the recorded performances, John Darnielle comments on the fact that he’s playing old songs and isn’t confident that he knows them well enough to do them justice. This isn’t uncommon for a Mountain Goats show, but it’s interesting that the sentiment combines so consistently with this specific song.

You get the sense that John Darnielle really enjoys the act of playing “Transjordanian Blues.” The liner notes call it a “sermon” but that’s also obvious just from hearing it. There are dozens of religious songs in the catalog, but few that are this direct. The strumming makes you want to clap along, campfire style, and the lyrics are infectious. By the end, he’s howling praise for the Lord and the audience, in every live version, is howling right along with him.

At a performance in 2017 in Australia, John Darnielle said that every live show in Pomona in the early days was “basically that for 20 minutes” after playing it passionately and loud as anything. It’s true, too. A lot of the early set lists are 10 furious songs played in under half an hour, with themes from the specific preparation of foods to the loneliness of the end of the world as a metaphor for a relationship ending. From the beginning, the man who would eventually write an entire album of songs with Bible versus for titles was interested in the power of things larger than oneself. It’s a song about the strength of salvation, but it’s also just a way to get yourself into the zone. It fits in with everything else not because of the subject, but because you can’t help but belt it out.