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    <channel>
        <title><![CDATA[ Miscellany - pckt ]]></title>
        <link><![CDATA[ https://miscellany.pckt.blog ]]></link>
        <description><![CDATA[  ]]></description>
        <language>en</language>
        <pubDate>Wed, 01 Jul 2026 04:39:10 +0000</pubDate>

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                <title>I worked out what I&#039;m going to do with this</title>
                <link>https://miscellany.pckt.blog/i-worked-out-what-im-going-to-do-with-this-hejt4ef</link>
                <description><![CDATA[So I&#039;m compulsive about signing up for new things and then not using them. Over the more than two decades that blogging has been a thing I&#039;ve probably made more than twenty and not used them because there&#039;s something terrifying about the blank feed that could be anything. I always want it to be Important. And in my brain the barrier between Important and Pretentious is at best semipermeable. I always work better with a structure or a challenge than without one, so I&#039;m going to steal a challenge ...]]></description>
                <author>Miscellany</author>
                <guid isPermaLink="false">i-worked-out-what-im-going-to-do-with-this-hejt4ef</guid>
                <pubDate>Fri, 09 Jan 2026 19:24:49 +0000</pubDate>
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                <title>June 30 - Going Invisible</title>
                <link>https://miscellany.pckt.blog/june-30-going-invisible-2nkfbg2</link>
                <description><![CDATA[The revisiting of demos is one of my favourite parts about the late month in This Year. Rarities, strange versions of things, small pieces of nearly forgotten art, and amongst them we have this: a song that is so perfect in its simple version that any studio version would feel like a downgrade. I never worry about feeling like a background figure. In fact, when it happens I usually welcome it. There&#039;s something worthwhile about not having to be the centre of the conversation, to working unseen, ...]]></description>
                <author>Miscellany</author>
                <guid isPermaLink="false">june-30-going-invisible-2nkfbg2</guid>
                <pubDate>Tue, 30 Jun 2026 22:18:44 +0000</pubDate>
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                <title>June 29 - Keeping House</title>
                <link>https://miscellany.pckt.blog/june-29-keeping-house-bwk9cy2</link>
                <description><![CDATA[Before I get into the lyrics I just want to delight in the gorgeous, sumptuous orchestration of this track, which starts and frenetic jangling guitars and grows to a joy of brass. And then we come to a fast upbeat set of lyrics about the futility of running from the past and the necessity of trying. Everything you try and leave behind comes with you. Everything you do to tidy up after the past just leaves more clean space for memory to track muddy footprints into you. The ghost on your doorstep ...]]></description>
                <author>Miscellany</author>
                <guid isPermaLink="false">june-29-keeping-house-bwk9cy2</guid>
                <pubDate>Mon, 29 Jun 2026 21:55:31 +0000</pubDate>
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                <title>June 28 - Attention All Pickpockets</title>
                <link>https://miscellany.pckt.blog/june-28-attention-all-pickpockets-q2cz9a9</link>
                <description><![CDATA[It&#039;s interesting to move away from the Sunset Tree and towards something that feels a lot fuzzier around the edges, albeit on a number of related subjects. This is a song about change and how we cope with it or don&#039;t cope with it, and the realisation that the past really did happen to someone else, even if bits of that someone else are still here. And you can&#039;t change this. The past happened, and a version of you was there and you have the memories, and some of those still feel like they happene...]]></description>
                <author>Miscellany</author>
                <guid isPermaLink="false">june-28-attention-all-pickpockets-q2cz9a9</guid>
                <pubDate>Sun, 28 Jun 2026 21:10:24 +0000</pubDate>
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                <title>June 27th - Tyler Lamber&#039;s Grave</title>
                <link>https://miscellany.pckt.blog/june-27th-tyler-lambers-grave-z11mdj6</link>
                <description><![CDATA[I don&#039;t have much to say about this one. It&#039;s musically beautiful, deeply sad, and something about it feels like listening to it is hearing something I&#039;m not supposed to hear. The unexpected deaths of the famous are often uncomfortable because of how the press treats them. The unexpected deaths of the relatives of the famous... that&#039;s where I cross from feeling uncomfortable to feeling like my presence is an intrusion.]]></description>
                <author>Miscellany</author>
                <guid isPermaLink="false">june-27th-tyler-lambers-grave-z11mdj6</guid>
                <pubDate>Fri, 26 Jun 2026 21:25:38 +0000</pubDate>
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                <title>June 26 - Song For Dennis Brown</title>
                <link>https://miscellany.pckt.blog/june-26-song-for-dennis-brown-2n83bg2</link>
                <description><![CDATA[A small and occasionally visited microgenre of The Mountain Goats is that of songs of the last moments. Early in this year we had Jimi Hendrix. Later on we&#039;ll have artists and bluesmen. Here it&#039;s a reggae singer whose influence outstrips his fame. But this is also not a sing about Dennis Brown. It&#039;s a song about how normal the world is when someone isn&#039;t going to be part of it any more. The Last Day Of Jimi Hendrix&#039;s Life was about how normal the world was for Jimi before his death. This is a si...]]></description>
                <author>Miscellany</author>
                <guid isPermaLink="false">june-26-song-for-dennis-brown-2n83bg2</guid>
                <pubDate>Thu, 25 Jun 2026 22:22:05 +0000</pubDate>
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                <title>June 24 - Build Your Own Container Garden</title>
                <link>https://miscellany.pckt.blog/june-24-build-your-own-container-garden-q2dz9a9</link>
                <description><![CDATA[This is a suitable song for a day when the heat and the humidity are causing the air to act like water, and I&#039;m rising and falling on every wave. This is a temperate country and it&#039;s currently not behaving in a temperate manner. So what better than a sleepy sad meditation on a journey taken to find a place to test one&#039;s commitment to remaining alive? This is a low late night drive on a hot day, looking out at landscapes of close shadows and distant homes. The thing about loneliness is that it&#039;s ...]]></description>
                <author>Miscellany</author>
                <guid isPermaLink="false">june-24-build-your-own-container-garden-q2dz9a9</guid>
                <pubDate>Wed, 24 Jun 2026 21:19:50 +0000</pubDate>
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                <title>June 21 - Whon</title>
                <link>https://miscellany.pckt.blog/june-21-whon-tzfhqge</link>
                <description><![CDATA[This is a barely recorded song that seems to only exist online as a live taping complete with audience sound. It&#039;s like listening at a bedroom door to someone playing for themselves. When writing the book, John apparently thought there was no live version of this. I&#039;m glad there is. It&#039;s John in a mood of quiet tired whimsy, and some of the lines are absolute all timers. You will never quite escape last year. None of us will. Because Mountain Goats are very much a taper&#039;s band, in the same way t...]]></description>
                <author>Miscellany</author>
                <guid isPermaLink="false">june-21-whon-tzfhqge</guid>
                <pubDate>Sun, 21 Jun 2026 20:57:25 +0000</pubDate>
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                <title>June 20 - The Day The Aliens Came</title>
                <link>https://miscellany.pckt.blog/june-20-the-day-the-aliens-came-28z4bg2</link>
                <description><![CDATA[The way this year of songs moves from demos to much more produced material is part of its charm as each day is either a treat you know or a curiosity to discover. This song is fascinating because it feels like one that needed to be written, needed to be recorded, but in some ways that was enough. This is a song that feels foundational to a lot of other later Mountain Goats songs. The violent wish fulfilment fantasy at its core (of aliens coming to destroy everyone but you) feels like a precursor...]]></description>
                <author>Miscellany</author>
                <guid isPermaLink="false">june-20-the-day-the-aliens-came-28z4bg2</guid>
                <pubDate>Sat, 20 Jun 2026 21:14:01 +0000</pubDate>
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                <title>June 19 - Pale Green Things</title>
                <link>https://miscellany.pckt.blog/june-19-pale-green-things-qdff9a9</link>
                <description><![CDATA[There&#039;s a sense in which this is a strange song to be on The Sunset Tree. It takes place a long time later, and while the your in the first verse is clearly the person who The Sunset Tree is about, everything about this song feels... later. A different person with only the most general view of who the rest of the album was about. What I get from this song is that forgiveness is hard and ugly and doesn&#039;t feel worth it and yet is necessary to avoid carrying frozen poison around with you. There are...]]></description>
                <author>Miscellany</author>
                <guid isPermaLink="false">june-19-pale-green-things-qdff9a9</guid>
                <pubDate>Fri, 19 Jun 2026 22:12:06 +0000</pubDate>
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                <title>June 17 - Pseudothyrum Song</title>
                <link>https://miscellany.pckt.blog/june-17-pseudothyrum-song-6g1hkgj</link>
                <description><![CDATA[A blast from the even further past, this song feels like an ancestor of the Sunset Tree but simultaneously sung by an older narrator, one who could get the perspective that The Sunset Tree deliberately eschews in favour of immediacy. It&#039;s a song about sadness regarding cruelty, and feels like it comes from a place of regret and an attempt at understanding rather than anger. But that said, the first time I heard the line I think someone was mean to you when you were little it felt like the funnie...]]></description>
                <author>Miscellany</author>
                <guid isPermaLink="false">june-17-pseudothyrum-song-6g1hkgj</guid>
                <pubDate>Wed, 17 Jun 2026 22:18:47 +0000</pubDate>
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                <title>June 16 - Up The Wolves</title>
                <link>https://miscellany.pckt.blog/june-16-up-the-wolves-zct8dj6</link>
                <description><![CDATA[The thing about pain is that sometimes its temporary absence feels blissful. It&#039;s how a lot of people I&#039;ve known with addiction issues have explained it to me. Just not being in pain. Up The Wolves is not without pain, it&#039;s a song about emotional and physical neglect and abandonment, but it has some moments of such perfect promised relief that listening to it feels like being washed in joy. Joy, and of course anger. For every There&#039;s gonna come a day when you feel better there&#039;s a I&#039;m gonna brib...]]></description>
                <author>Miscellany</author>
                <guid isPermaLink="false">june-16-up-the-wolves-zct8dj6</guid>
                <pubDate>Tue, 16 Jun 2026 22:16:40 +0000</pubDate>
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                <title>June 15th - This Year</title>
                <link>https://miscellany.pckt.blog/june-15th-this-year-tz0jqge</link>
                <description><![CDATA[Happy This Year day, everyone. You made it. If the Mountain Goats are remembered for one song, it&#039;s likely to be this one. And if not this one then No Children. I don&#039;t know if that was true ten years ago, but post-pandemic this song kept so many people alive in ways that are at best partially associated with the lyrics. Taken as just the song, this is an incredible mix of reminiscence, horror, and defiance. The trauma of being young, of tasting the solace of a better life, of returning to the w...]]></description>
                <author>Miscellany</author>
                <guid isPermaLink="false">june-15th-this-year-tz0jqge</guid>
                <pubDate>Mon, 15 Jun 2026 20:57:09 +0000</pubDate>
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                <title>June 14 - You Were Cool</title>
                <link>https://miscellany.pckt.blog/june-14-you-were-cool-f97xhyp</link>
                <description><![CDATA[A remarkably simple song that connects in the simplest way to its emotions. I think of this as a cousin to Song for my Stepfather, albeit a cousin in a healthier place. It&#039;s also very strongly linked in my head to Amy AKA Spent Gladiator. It&#039;s often odd for me to listen to John&#039;s very early material and see how deep he was in allegory, trying to sneak meaning through in deniable ways. And then at some point figuring out that in a lot of cases he could just come out and say what he felt, what was...]]></description>
                <author>Miscellany</author>
                <guid isPermaLink="false">june-14-you-were-cool-f97xhyp</guid>
                <pubDate>Mon, 15 Jun 2026 18:30:59 +0000</pubDate>
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                <title>June 13 - Rescue Breathing</title>
                <link>https://miscellany.pckt.blog/june-13-rescue-breathing-16zw8wv</link>
                <description><![CDATA[John&#039;s ephemera (and this sat in a notebook for twenty years before being recorded) are often the places where he is at his most playful. And by playful I definitely don&#039;t mean unserious or lighthearted. Often the sweetest smallest song is the most direct route to the darkest and most painful material, with the light of the melody allowing the lyrics to carry what they need to carry. And here what they carry is a combination of tenderness and everyday horror. This is an overdose story framed as ...]]></description>
                <author>Miscellany</author>
                <guid isPermaLink="false">june-13-rescue-breathing-16zw8wv</guid>
                <pubDate>Sat, 13 Jun 2026 21:13:08 +0000</pubDate>
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                <title>June 12 - From TG&amp;Y</title>
                <link>https://miscellany.pckt.blog/june-12-from-tgy-8kzhnwy</link>
                <description><![CDATA[This is an anthem of helplessness. Not despair, at least not overt despair, but a song about the impossibility of changing what is happening without changing who you are, and how the attempt to keep things together can just mean destroying them more slowly. Depression is exhausting. You feel all these things or nothing, you find yourself cut off from so much that meant something to you. And at the same time you still have to get up and have a shower and worry about functioning either within soci...]]></description>
                <author>Miscellany</author>
                <guid isPermaLink="false">june-12-from-tgy-8kzhnwy</guid>
                <pubDate>Fri, 12 Jun 2026 21:36:22 +0000</pubDate>
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                <title>June 10 - Dilaudid</title>
                <link>https://miscellany.pckt.blog/june-10-dilaudid-tz73qge</link>
                <description><![CDATA[Everything about listening to this makes me tense in the best way. The staccato strings and the urgent nature of the lyrics add up to the feeling of something constrained, desperate, vulnerable, and passionate. This song has some of John&#039;s best lyrical content, moving effortlessly from the urgent paranoia of the world going wrong to the horny desperation of an early girlfriend where lust is taking over from love, and the way these two things crash into each other. it&#039;s a song of fumbled encounte...]]></description>
                <author>Miscellany</author>
                <guid isPermaLink="false">june-10-dilaudid-tz73qge</guid>
                <pubDate>Wed, 10 Jun 2026 21:40:57 +0000</pubDate>
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                <title>June 9 - Scavenger Babies</title>
                <link>https://miscellany.pckt.blog/june-9-scavenger-babies-bnt4cy2</link>
                <description><![CDATA[It&#039;s never not going to be a good time when you have a rolling guitar, John in trembling voice, and a list of things to do. A good John List Song feels like a properly conducted ritual. These are the things that make you good or pure or proper or maybe just will reduce the feeling of dread in your heart for five minutes. This is both an odd song and a perfectly sensible song to drop in Sunset Tree Month. This is how you keep it together afterwards. This is how you stay as the person you became. ...]]></description>
                <author>Miscellany</author>
                <guid isPermaLink="false">june-9-scavenger-babies-bnt4cy2</guid>
                <pubDate>Tue, 09 Jun 2026 23:17:49 +0000</pubDate>
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                <title>June 8 - Broom People</title>
                <link>https://miscellany.pckt.blog/june-8-broom-people-923ps7z</link>
                <description><![CDATA[I mean, shit. I have coherent things to say about this song, but friends who don&#039;t have a clue, well meaning teachers is a fucking novel in a line. Solace in a chaotic life, beauty in the wild and the cold, rage and despair turning into power through pressure and releasing in the right places. The transformative power of having someone who care when nobody did.]]></description>
                <author>Miscellany</author>
                <guid isPermaLink="false">june-8-broom-people-923ps7z</guid>
                <pubDate>Mon, 08 Jun 2026 21:44:17 +0000</pubDate>
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                <title>June 7th - Hast Thou Considered The Tetrapod</title>
                <link>https://miscellany.pckt.blog/june-7th-hast-thou-considered-the-tetrapod-rvb3uz7</link>
                <description><![CDATA[If Song For My Stepfather is John&#039;s pain at its most naked, this is perhaps John&#039;s pain at its most transubstantiated. Both songs describe blunt and unforgivable violence upon a child, but the points of view and the way the reality of it are processed couldn&#039;t be more different. This song, and its huge and soaring organs, aren&#039;t about the violence that was experienced, painful and traumatic though it was. This song is about the not the consolation that it might end but the consolation that one d...]]></description>
                <author>Miscellany</author>
                <guid isPermaLink="false">june-7th-hast-thou-considered-the-tetrapod-rvb3uz7</guid>
                <pubDate>Sun, 07 Jun 2026 21:29:11 +0000</pubDate>
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                <title>June 6 - Magpie</title>
                <link>https://miscellany.pckt.blog/june-6-magpie-hsajt4e</link>
                <description><![CDATA[The most consciously folksy song on a not-very-folksy album, and one of the only ones to fit the Mountain Goats trope of list of things you must do which is one of my favourite tropes. Remember what we had here when there was something left to save is the kind of line that I&#039;m always going to regret not being good enough to write myself. This is a song about reckoning, and scavenging, and paying prices that might well be too bad. There&#039;s no reasoning with the magpie, he will take what he takes a...]]></description>
                <author>Miscellany</author>
                <guid isPermaLink="false">june-6-magpie-hsajt4e</guid>
                <pubDate>Sat, 06 Jun 2026 22:38:33 +0000</pubDate>
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                <title>June 5 - Song For My Stepfather</title>
                <link>https://miscellany.pckt.blog/june-5-song-for-my-stepfather-9275s7z</link>
                <description><![CDATA[This small beautiful song, a simple chard structure, a voice and a guitar, is the purest distillation of everything that John elaborates and explores in The Sunset Tree. It&#039;s quite shockingly painful, a story of smallness, helplessness, and the places people go in their heads when bad things happen. It&#039;s no wonder to me at all that this didn&#039;t make the album. My understanding is that John plays it from time to time to keep it alive, but I can&#039;t imagine the pain that playing this every night on a...]]></description>
                <author>Miscellany</author>
                <guid isPermaLink="false">june-5-song-for-my-stepfather-9275s7z</guid>
                <pubDate>Fri, 05 Jun 2026 22:22:35 +0000</pubDate>
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                <title>June 4 - Dance Music</title>
                <link>https://miscellany.pckt.blog/june-4-dance-music-va8my0t</link>
                <description><![CDATA[This gorgeous song is two vignettes of two different types of trauma. Both told in the same stream of consciousness moment-of life style, as if jumping straight into a memory already in progress. The first and simplest is about the fear of physical harm: harm to the self, harm to a loved one, from the moster living in the house. Here the dance music coming from the record player is escape and guilt and shelter all at once. The second is more complex, although it&#039;s built on the trauma of the firs...]]></description>
                <author>Miscellany</author>
                <guid isPermaLink="false">june-4-dance-music-va8my0t</guid>
                <pubDate>Thu, 04 Jun 2026 21:58:17 +0000</pubDate>
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                <title>June 3 - Abandoning My Father Talking Blues</title>
                <link>https://miscellany.pckt.blog/june-3-abandoning-my-father-talking-blues-pqyjfky</link>
                <description><![CDATA[This is, as John says, when it starts, a sad one. It&#039;s about people who have no choice and the choices that get made for them. It&#039;s about things that are presented as opportunities and are actually just mitigations. It&#039;s about sandboxes in parking lots and the ever present silent threat of things being worse. I&#039;ve been through many things in my life. Everyone has, that&#039;s why they call it a life. But I&#039;m quietly glad that I&#039;ve never felt unsafe in the place where I&#039;ve lived. I&#039;ve felt depressed a...]]></description>
                <author>Miscellany</author>
                <guid isPermaLink="false">june-3-abandoning-my-father-talking-blues-pqyjfky</guid>
                <pubDate>Wed, 03 Jun 2026 21:30:24 +0000</pubDate>
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                <title>June 2 - You Or Your Memory</title>
                <link>https://miscellany.pckt.blog/june-2-you-or-your-memory-8kt0nwy</link>
                <description><![CDATA[God, this is going to be a month. The first thing to note about this song is that by the standards of the Mountain Goats it&#039;s incredibly simple. A narrative without allusion, without hiding. The events of a young man in pain contemplating something. The rest of the album is there to explain how he got here, but this song is painfully simple and to the point. The second thing to note about this song is that it&#039;s basically fucking perfect. A rolling, almost sweet song that carefully packages how d...]]></description>
                <author>Miscellany</author>
                <guid isPermaLink="false">june-2-you-or-your-memory-8kt0nwy</guid>
                <pubDate>Tue, 02 Jun 2026 21:32:56 +0000</pubDate>
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                <title>May 31 - Porcile</title>
                <link>https://miscellany.pckt.blog/may-31-porcile-qday9a9</link>
                <description><![CDATA[End of the month, time for a rarity, and this feels very much like a song that acts as a portent of times yet to come. The conceit of this song is that it&#039;s written from the point of view of a person who is changing into a pig, and the violence they unleash upon themselves in trying to cope with it. A simple theme we&#039;ve heard a thousand times before as I&#039;m sure you&#039;ll agree. The part where this sing feels like a portent is in its fear of violence. The idiot, caught in accident, expecting punishm...]]></description>
                <author>Miscellany</author>
                <guid isPermaLink="false">may-31-porcile-qday9a9</guid>
                <pubDate>Sun, 31 May 2026 22:53:19 +0000</pubDate>
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                <title>May 30 - Cotton</title>
                <link>https://miscellany.pckt.blog/may-30-cotton-vabey0t</link>
                <description><![CDATA[Is whimsical catharsis a thing? This song is light and beautiful and soft, a gentle account of the things we hang onto, the memories that pain us, the scabs we pick at, the guilt we tend and maintain, and an easy instruction to do the hardest thing possible. Leave it behind. It&#039;s not forgiveness per se, it&#039;s not even forgetting. It&#039;s just... not hanging onto things.]]></description>
                <author>Miscellany</author>
                <guid isPermaLink="false">may-30-cotton-vabey0t</guid>
                <pubDate>Sat, 30 May 2026 22:45:47 +0000</pubDate>
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                <title>May 29 - Rose Quarter Drifting / We Shall All Be Healed</title>
                <link>https://miscellany.pckt.blog/may-29-rose-quarter-drifting-we-shall-all-be-healed-d1xu23r</link>
                <description><![CDATA[This is a fragment, an unreleased song that only exists in versions from radio stations and live shows. And as such it&#039;s easy to see the ideas that started here and came out later. The line stared down demons, came back breathing felt like a preview of You Were Cool or Spent Gladiator 1. And those are two of my absolute favourites. This is a song about being a ghost, about visiting ghosts. About going back to old places, which is not something you can ever actually do. There&#039;s a town I can never...]]></description>
                <author>Miscellany</author>
                <guid isPermaLink="false">may-29-rose-quarter-drifting-we-shall-all-be-healed-d1xu23r</guid>
                <pubDate>Fri, 29 May 2026 22:22:13 +0000</pubDate>
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                <title>May 28 - Against Pollution</title>
                <link>https://miscellany.pckt.blog/may-28-against-pollution-ex2548c</link>
                <description><![CDATA[I don&#039;t know if there&#039;s such a thing as a stadium anthem of eschatological nihilism, but if there is, that&#039;s this song. A huge and momentous sound to this song, coupled with lyrics that start with a narrow focus of the mundane and horrifying, but can&#039;t help but look up to see vast and impossible futures. This is a song of redemption. Of viewing ourselves and our actions in their total form, from a perspective we can&#039;t imagine. Once you&#039;re through the nihilism it&#039;s a song of trust and hope. We wi...]]></description>
                <author>Miscellany</author>
                <guid isPermaLink="false">may-28-against-pollution-ex2548c</guid>
                <pubDate>Thu, 28 May 2026 22:21:27 +0000</pubDate>
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                <title>May 27 - Pigs That Ran Straightaway Into the Water, Triumph</title>
                <link>https://miscellany.pckt.blog/may-27-pigs-that-ran-straightaway-into-the-water-triumph-d1ak23r</link>
                <description><![CDATA[This song is two things. First of all, it&#039;s a song played on a bus while someone is being taken to jail. Second of all, it&#039;s a song of the heart and of triumph. We Shall All Be healed is a remarkable and powerful album, but it&#039;s also kind of a beginning-to-end bummer. It&#039;s an album about addiction and the ways people survive it and don&#039;t, and neither of those options comes without pain. it&#039;s possible to sing beautifully about pain, but pain is also exhausting. This book of days isn&#039;t in strict o...]]></description>
                <author>Miscellany</author>
                <guid isPermaLink="false">may-27-pigs-that-ran-straightaway-into-the-water-triumph-d1ak23r</guid>
                <pubDate>Wed, 27 May 2026 22:37:32 +0000</pubDate>
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                <title>May 26 - Home Again Garden Grove</title>
                <link>https://miscellany.pckt.blog/may-26-home-again-garden-grove-vasgy0t</link>
                <description><![CDATA[A rolling boil of paranoia, this is a song about scoring. The mania and the on-edge nature of looking desperately for something, caught in the rabid simplicity of needing your fix and nothing else. Everything about the song here, from the lyrics to the instrumentation to the mix, is a set of spiky lines where nothing comfortable can happen. One of the reasons I started doing this blog, started following John Darnielle&#039;s music from its earliest forms through whatever came after, is how utterly un...]]></description>
                <author>Miscellany</author>
                <guid isPermaLink="false">may-26-home-again-garden-grove-vasgy0t</guid>
                <pubDate>Tue, 26 May 2026 21:38:24 +0000</pubDate>
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                <title>May 25 - Mole</title>
                <link>https://miscellany.pckt.blog/may-25-mole-tzg5qge</link>
                <description><![CDATA[Sometimes the simplicity and audacity of a song just wash over you. Mole is a simple, tiny melody, a story of an addict going to visit another addict in a hospital bed that had been gained via misadventure. Small and sad and kept afloat by a false hope of better times. And then the tidal wave of the middle movement hits you, and all the chaos that is being carefully kept out rushes through the song uncontrollably and everything is enormous piano and uncontrolled noise. And then it&#039;s quiet and sm...]]></description>
                <author>Miscellany</author>
                <guid isPermaLink="false">may-25-mole-tzg5qge</guid>
                <pubDate>Mon, 25 May 2026 22:15:26 +0000</pubDate>
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                <title>May 24 - Your Belgian Things</title>
                <link>https://miscellany.pckt.blog/may-24-your-belgian-things-zcysdj6</link>
                <description><![CDATA[So, going to start by looking at the musicality here. This is an absolute joy of a mid century ballad. The way the guitar and bass and piano wrap around each other and the repeated poetic refrains. I can&#039;t imagine exactly what the musical this came from would be, but it would absolutely make me cry. What a mature, subtle, sensitive piece of music. And now the lyrics. John exists deep in a landscape of metaphor and imagery, and this is all about absence and traces and the things we leave behind i...]]></description>
                <author>Miscellany</author>
                <guid isPermaLink="false">may-24-your-belgian-things-zcysdj6</guid>
                <pubDate>Sun, 24 May 2026 22:15:43 +0000</pubDate>
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                <title>May 23 - Letter From Belgium</title>
                <link>https://miscellany.pckt.blog/may-23-letter-from-belgium-tzugqge</link>
                <description><![CDATA[A really gorgeous post-punk sound to this one, and a style of song that has a number of my favourite features of Mountain Goats songs. I&#039;ve never done methamphetamine. For so many reasons. One of the more minor ones is that someone once descibed the feeling of it to me as like you&#039;ve stayed up until 3AM and burned past the fatigue only that&#039;s the best feeling in the world and I can&#039;t actually think of many things I&#039;d like less. Nonetheless the sound of this song is the sound that I imagine from ...]]></description>
                <author>Miscellany</author>
                <guid isPermaLink="false">may-23-letter-from-belgium-tzugqge</guid>
                <pubDate>Sat, 23 May 2026 22:24:42 +0000</pubDate>
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                <title>May 22 - Hommel West</title>
                <link>https://miscellany.pckt.blog/may-22-hommel-west-6gjvkgj</link>
                <description><![CDATA[]]></description>
                <author>Miscellany</author>
                <guid isPermaLink="false">may-22-hommel-west-6gjvkgj</guid>
                <pubDate>Fri, 22 May 2026 22:32:43 +0000</pubDate>
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                <title>May 21 - Butter Teeth</title>
                <link>https://miscellany.pckt.blog/may-21-butter-teeth-vaqry0t</link>
                <description><![CDATA[Still in the We Shall All Be Healed headspace, this is a b-side from a Mountain Goats single and also a quiet and assured banger. The rhyme scheme and melody are the sketch of an idea that will one day become Lovecraft In Brooklyn (more on that later), and the song itself is a slow almost leisurely exploration of the mania of an amphetamine high., This is the up, the point where everything is forward, you have been launched into gear by a substance hitting your brain and while it&#039;s there you are...]]></description>
                <author>Miscellany</author>
                <guid isPermaLink="false">may-21-butter-teeth-vaqry0t</guid>
                <pubDate>Thu, 21 May 2026 21:08:30 +0000</pubDate>
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                <title>May 20 - Linda Blair Was Born Innocent</title>
                <link>https://miscellany.pckt.blog/may-20-linda-blair-was-born-innocent-16mh8wv</link>
                <description><![CDATA[We&#039;ve hit another pre-existing favourite. The opening line of this has been following me around online for like fifteen years now. And when the strings come in at the line hungry for love, ready to drown this song flies. There&#039;s something about a sing about desperate lost youth who are doomed but still celebrating. There is a joy in nihilism. As Willow Nightingale tells us, nothing matters, smile anyway.]]></description>
                <author>Miscellany</author>
                <guid isPermaLink="false">may-20-linda-blair-was-born-innocent-16mh8wv</guid>
                <pubDate>Wed, 20 May 2026 21:33:12 +0000</pubDate>
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                <title>May 19 - All up The Seething Coast</title>
                <link>https://miscellany.pckt.blog/may-19-all-up-the-seething-coast-54tfv73</link>
                <description><![CDATA[This is the sound of the high, the sound of contented paranoia. This whole album is about the things people go through during addiction, and this is about the worst part: the pleasure. From the droning guitar to the half spoken lyrics, this is the sound of lethargy masquerading as contentment. There&#039;s an Irvine Welsh line in Trainspotting about one of the pleasures of junk being that it simplifies everything. You&#039;re not worried about your car or your house or your girlfriend or the guy living on...]]></description>
                <author>Miscellany</author>
                <guid isPermaLink="false">may-19-all-up-the-seething-coast-54tfv73</guid>
                <pubDate>Tue, 19 May 2026 21:31:02 +0000</pubDate>
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                <title>May 18 - Slow West Vultures</title>
                <link>https://miscellany.pckt.blog/may-18-slow-west-vultures-bn4ncy2</link>
                <description><![CDATA[My god, this song is huge. The soundscape is vast, the lyrics cryptic and visionary, everything about it is the overture for a statement of strangeness and desperation and hope. This is a sing by a slightly older man from the perspective of his younger self, viewing nihilism from the outside, singing about the future without imagining he would be in it. The lyrics here are sly and cynical and hu7morous and angry at the slivers of hope within. There&#039;s a maturity to this that is about more than ju...]]></description>
                <author>Miscellany</author>
                <guid isPermaLink="false">may-18-slow-west-vultures-bn4ncy2</guid>
                <pubDate>Mon, 18 May 2026 21:38:27 +0000</pubDate>
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                <title>May 16 - Beat The Devil</title>
                <link>https://miscellany.pckt.blog/may-16-beat-the-devil-8kmvnwy</link>
                <description><![CDATA[So we&#039;re in the heyday of songs about smuggling, then. This is tense and lyrical, an ode to the emotions of doing something unwise and uncertain because you have to and you want to and it&#039;s the only way to get money. This is a dark song about hope, or maybe a bright song about ongoing despair. You want the narrator to succeed, and you know that on any even medium timeline he won&#039;t. And that the best and least likely outcome is that he gets out and does something else and finds a way to deal with...]]></description>
                <author>Miscellany</author>
                <guid isPermaLink="false">may-16-beat-the-devil-8kmvnwy</guid>
                <pubDate>Sat, 16 May 2026 21:59:40 +0000</pubDate>
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                <title>March 15 - Duane Allman Slept Here</title>
                <link>https://miscellany.pckt.blog/march-15-duane-allman-slept-here-164p8wv</link>
                <description><![CDATA[This song is smoky and slow and tired. The lyrics in this, the live version, possibly the only version, are tired and strange and doubt themselves. And it&#039;s amazing It is what it sounds like. A song about burning yourself out of your own mind. I got five minutes sleep, it was an accident.]]></description>
                <author>Miscellany</author>
                <guid isPermaLink="false">march-15-duane-allman-slept-here-164p8wv</guid>
                <pubDate>Fri, 15 May 2026 21:19:49 +0000</pubDate>
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                <title>May 14 - Snakeheads</title>
                <link>https://miscellany.pckt.blog/may-14-snakeheads-zcuhdj6</link>
                <description><![CDATA[If you&#039;ve never heard a picaresque song about people smugglers heading across country in a u-haul... well, now you have. Like the best Mountain Goats songs, this one is a cheerful knife to the heart, with a combination of tenderness and cruelty. The result is a gentle portrait of ungentle people, exactly on the knife edge between being unsettlingly human about people involved in human trafficking, and unflinching in its acceptance of the reality that this means. Good music makes you think. Which...]]></description>
                <author>Miscellany</author>
                <guid isPermaLink="false">may-14-snakeheads-zcuhdj6</guid>
                <pubDate>Thu, 14 May 2026 21:31:04 +0000</pubDate>
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                <title>May 13 - Deserters</title>
                <link>https://miscellany.pckt.blog/may-13-deserters-tzw6qge</link>
                <description><![CDATA[It&#039;s amazing how dark and directionless this song sounds. The vocal is purposefully listless, the guitar work dissonant and uneven, and all of it adds to the effect of someone who is unconnected from reality and deeply exhausted about it. I worry about paranoia. This is a paranoid age, and it can be tough to tell the difference between justified fears and irrational impulses. This is a song that exists at the grubby edge of sanity, pushed there by drugs or psychosis, or other things. I remember ...]]></description>
                <author>Miscellany</author>
                <guid isPermaLink="false">may-13-deserters-tzw6qge</guid>
                <pubDate>Wed, 13 May 2026 22:17:44 +0000</pubDate>
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                <title>May 12 - Cut Off Their Thumbs</title>
                <link>https://miscellany.pckt.blog/may-12-cut-off-their-thumbs-d1gc23r</link>
                <description><![CDATA[So, no song yesterday, or rather no song with a recording yesterday. This is a small delight and a curiosity, a song recorded just after Tallahassee but not released until it was posted on the Mountain Goats website a few years later. It&#039;s a rolling ballad about being in great danger and having to decide if, when people get hurt, you&#039;re one of them. Or one of the people doing the hurting. It&#039;s also a very nice sign of how far John has come as a single guitar and single voice guy that everything ...]]></description>
                <author>Miscellany</author>
                <guid isPermaLink="false">may-12-cut-off-their-thumbs-d1gc23r</guid>
                <pubDate>Tue, 12 May 2026 22:05:52 +0000</pubDate>
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                <title>May 10 - No Children</title>
                <link>https://miscellany.pckt.blog/may-10-no-children-f919hyp</link>
                <description><![CDATA[It&#039;s tough now to think of how this song made me feel the first time I heard it. it&#039;s become an old friend who has been there for me in all sorts of times, good and bad. The way the backing vocals burst in on in my life. The way I hope I never get sober is said as an aside. It&#039;s tough to get an objective view on something you can hear whether or not it&#039;s playing. So instead I&#039;ll talk about why I think this song has engrained so deeply in people. For one thing it&#039;s musically beautiful. The roll o...]]></description>
                <author>Miscellany</author>
                <guid isPermaLink="false">may-10-no-children-f919hyp</guid>
                <pubDate>Sun, 10 May 2026 22:07:57 +0000</pubDate>
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                <title>May 9 - Alpha Rats Nest</title>
                <link>https://miscellany.pckt.blog/may-9-alpha-rats-nest-exf848c</link>
                <description><![CDATA[Sometimes things creep up on you. They become true over a course of enough time that by the time you realise it you&#039;re realising what has happened not what is happening. So it is with this song and the realisation that Mountain Goats have gone from being a band of inscrutable, impenetrable lyrics to being a band of equally inscrutable but deeply accessible lyrics. This joyful bitter song is just as much of an expression of poisoned joy as the rest of this concept album, bus its odd wordplay seem...]]></description>
                <author>Miscellany</author>
                <guid isPermaLink="false">may-9-alpha-rats-nest-exf848c</guid>
                <pubDate>Sat, 09 May 2026 22:01:24 +0000</pubDate>
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                <title>May 8 - See America Right</title>
                <link>https://miscellany.pckt.blog/may-8-see-america-right-d1rv23r</link>
                <description><![CDATA[Your love is like a cyclone in a swamp is one of the lines of all time. This is an intense song of chaos, in the intense part of a relationship going bad. John&#039;s alpha couple have many twists and turns on their way to purgatory, but this one is particularly atmospheric. We don&#039;t know why the narrator was in jail, or where he and his co-conspirator in this doomed relationship will go next. All we can say is that they bring their own chaos with them, and the two forms of chaos they bring are at wa...]]></description>
                <author>Miscellany</author>
                <guid isPermaLink="false">may-8-see-america-right-d1rv23r</guid>
                <pubDate>Fri, 08 May 2026 22:23:23 +0000</pubDate>
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                <title>May 7 - Oceanographer&#039;s Choice</title>
                <link>https://miscellany.pckt.blog/may-7-oceanographers-choice-ge7k55y</link>
                <description><![CDATA[A driving bop, full of energy. Starts with stabbing Superman with a broadsword and goes up from there. This is full of energy, admittedly dark energy, and is a packed fantasia of fraught things happening to fraught people. It&#039;s also... and even as I type this I&#039;m not sure exactly how I mean this... it&#039;s also one of the most normal songs that I&#039;ve heard from the Mountain Goats so far. Not in a negative sense. In more of a sense that this sounds like something that was professionally recorded in a...]]></description>
                <author>Miscellany</author>
                <guid isPermaLink="false">may-7-oceanographers-choice-ge7k55y</guid>
                <pubDate>Thu, 07 May 2026 22:16:44 +0000</pubDate>
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                <title>May 6 - The House That Dripped Blood</title>
                <link>https://miscellany.pckt.blog/may-6-the-house-that-dripped-blood-47f3a1t</link>
                <description><![CDATA[There is something delightfully sleazy about the instrumentation of this song. I&#039;m getting a strong dose of PJ Harvey. More than that, this is a song with swagger in a way that feels new to Mountain Goats songs. The wild harmonica at the end gives this is feeling of a barely-inside house in the swamp. And in this house we see not people but the remnants of their movement. This is a home that has seen a marriage tear itself apart violently, has seen it recently. The passion and blood are still in...]]></description>
                <author>Miscellany</author>
                <guid isPermaLink="false">may-6-the-house-that-dripped-blood-47f3a1t</guid>
                <pubDate>Wed, 06 May 2026 22:09:12 +0000</pubDate>
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                <title>May 5th - Southwood Plantation Road</title>
                <link>https://miscellany.pckt.blog/may-5th-southwood-plantation-road-zcw0dj6</link>
                <description><![CDATA[A secret small love of mine: songs where someone sings la la la la We&#039;re wandering still further into Tallahassee, reaching what might be thought of as an upswing in the dysfunctional relationship that is this couple. There is happiness here, albeit a desperate happiness kicking to stay afloat. I am not gonna lose you, we are gonna stay married is a line not of affirmation but of a death grip on what it thinks joy is. And so the weird pop of this journey into one of the first fully orchestrated ...]]></description>
                <author>Miscellany</author>
                <guid isPermaLink="false">may-5th-southwood-plantation-road-zcw0dj6</guid>
                <pubDate>Tue, 05 May 2026 22:18:49 +0000</pubDate>
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                <title>May 4 - First Few Desperate hours</title>
                <link>https://miscellany.pckt.blog/may-4-first-few-desperate-hours-d16g23r</link>
                <description><![CDATA[It continues to interest me how much more complete Tallahassee feels as a sound for a band than the previous Mountain Goats albums, and band is the word here. There are at maximum three instruments playing at the same time here, not counting John&#039;s voice, and yet the sound is rich, deep, and complex. This is a song about the past catching up with you. Not in the sense of old decisions haunting you, or things you&#039;ve done biting you in the ass, or even people seeing reprisal for past actions, but ...]]></description>
                <author>Miscellany</author>
                <guid isPermaLink="false">may-4-first-few-desperate-hours-d16g23r</guid>
                <pubDate>Mon, 04 May 2026 21:37:34 +0000</pubDate>
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                <title>May 3 - Tallahassee</title>
                <link>https://miscellany.pckt.blog/may-3-tallahassee-f9dfhyp</link>
                <description><![CDATA[In retrospect this song is a thumping great mission statement. It&#039;s the first track on one of the two most pivotal Mountain Goats albums, with All Hail West Texas being the perfection of the Guitar and buzzing tape recorder era, and Tallahassee being the start of the full band and instrumentation era. And, let&#039;s be entirely clear about this, it&#039;s gorgeous. It&#039;s a quiet overture to an album about two people poisoning each other&#039;s lives. There&#039;s a tension in the soft bassline that gives the whole ...]]></description>
                <author>Miscellany</author>
                <guid isPermaLink="false">may-3-tallahassee-f9dfhyp</guid>
                <pubDate>Sun, 03 May 2026 22:00:09 +0000</pubDate>
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                <title>May 2 - Old College Try</title>
                <link>https://miscellany.pckt.blog/may-2-old-college-try-hs2wt4e</link>
                <description><![CDATA[All right folks, it&#039;s taken us four months but we&#039;ve reached Tallahassee. And we&#039;re starting off with one of the most genuinely wonderful songs on this album. An ode to exhausted but still kicking love. Toxic, poisoned, bleeding, but still real and powerful. And my god, is the instrumentation of this utterly beautiful. The keyboard and the organs and the duochrome of the album cover. There&#039;s something sacred about this sound. It&#039;s weird because so many other versions of this theme highlight the ...]]></description>
                <author>Miscellany</author>
                <guid isPermaLink="false">may-2-old-college-try-hs2wt4e</guid>
                <pubDate>Sat, 02 May 2026 21:49:21 +0000</pubDate>
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                <title>May 1 - Twelve Hands High</title>
                <link>https://miscellany.pckt.blog/may-1-twelve-hands-high-6gv1kgj</link>
                <description><![CDATA[Technically this isn&#039;t a Mountain Goats song. It&#039;s instead a song by The Extra Glenns, a band consisting of John Darnielle and Franklin Bruno. But what it actually is is a lovely bop with some honky tonk piano and delightful guitars. As for the narrative of this song, it&#039;s an age old story we&#039;ve all experienced. Just the moment in a tense and destructive relationship where a horse unexpectedly bursts through the wall into your house and crushes you. We&#039;ve heard this story a thousand times of cou...]]></description>
                <author>Miscellany</author>
                <guid isPermaLink="false">may-1-twelve-hands-high-6gv1kgj</guid>
                <pubDate>Fri, 01 May 2026 22:08:55 +0000</pubDate>
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                <title>April 29 - Insurance Fraud #2</title>
                <link>https://miscellany.pckt.blog/april-29-insurance-fraud-2-d1nr23r</link>
                <description><![CDATA[My Don&#039;t commit insurance fraud, it&#039;s not worth it song has people asking a lot of questions already answered by the song. In all seriousness, this is a delightful, ominous song about love burning down, which is a common theme in this era of Mountain Goats. It&#039;s a song that reassures and unsettles at the same time, and provides a soundtrack to love getting dangerous.]]></description>
                <author>Miscellany</author>
                <guid isPermaLink="false">april-29-insurance-fraud-2-d1nr23r</guid>
                <pubDate>Wed, 29 Apr 2026 21:37:45 +0000</pubDate>
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                <title>April 28 - Indonesia</title>
                <link>https://miscellany.pckt.blog/april-28-indonesia-sbc3z85</link>
                <description><![CDATA[The summer came in carrying spring in its mouth is an incredible first line, and the rest of the song follows as poetic metaphor that starts from love but soars into something elemental. There&#039;s an interesting thing happening with John&#039;s lyrics as time goes by. His content isn&#039;t getting more simple, he still writes complicated and layered metaphor and delights in wordplay, but he&#039;s found a level of wry accessibility that he hadn&#039;t worked out yet in his earlier songs. The emotions aren&#039;t simpler ...]]></description>
                <author>Miscellany</author>
                <guid isPermaLink="false">april-28-indonesia-sbc3z85</guid>
                <pubDate>Tue, 28 Apr 2026 21:51:11 +0000</pubDate>
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                <title>April 27 - Absolute Lithops Effect</title>
                <link>https://miscellany.pckt.blog/april-27-absolute-lithops-effect-wug464p</link>
                <description><![CDATA[I don&#039;t know, man. I think I&#039;m tired. A long stretch of days, some good, some bad, with today as a good one that wore me out. It&#039;s meant when I came to my Mountain Goats song at the end of today it played over me and i didn&#039;t have much to say. It&#039;s nice. I think we all could use a little tender mercy. but I think I&#039;m failing it. maybe I come back to it later.]]></description>
                <author>Miscellany</author>
                <guid isPermaLink="false">april-27-absolute-lithops-effect-wug464p</guid>
                <pubDate>Mon, 27 Apr 2026 22:26:50 +0000</pubDate>
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                <title>April 26 - Yoga</title>
                <link>https://miscellany.pckt.blog/april-26-yoga-6ggbkgj</link>
                <description><![CDATA[Hearing full or even partial band Mountain Goats from this period (this is another Devil in the Shortwave track) is a really interesting experience, because it feels like watching something emerge. This is true nowhere more than in this track, which starts off with simple guitar and strings and builds upwards through increased chaotic instrumentation. I love the lyrical delicacy here, starting with a small moment of conflict in miniature (it was lovely, it was awful, it was that kind of feeling)...]]></description>
                <author>Miscellany</author>
                <guid isPermaLink="false">april-26-yoga-6ggbkgj</guid>
                <pubDate>Sun, 26 Apr 2026 22:05:56 +0000</pubDate>
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                <title>April 25th - Jeff Davis County Blues</title>
                <link>https://miscellany.pckt.blog/april-25th-jeff-davis-county-blues-2880bg2</link>
                <description><![CDATA[There&#039;s something especially American about the aimless road trip, the small towns flitted through when you&#039;re going not towards but away, places that must have their own life but which you only experience as lonely and quiet stops on the way towards you don&#039;t know what. One of the things that I&#039;m not sure many people from my own country fully appreciate about America, even if they intellectually know it, is how much of it is the empty spaces between points. You read books on trips like this, yo...]]></description>
                <author>Miscellany</author>
                <guid isPermaLink="false">april-25th-jeff-davis-county-blues-2880bg2</guid>
                <pubDate>Sat, 25 Apr 2026 22:31:42 +0000</pubDate>
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                <title>April 24 - Store</title>
                <link>https://miscellany.pckt.blog/april-24-store-pqq8fky</link>
                <description><![CDATA[I&#039;m not sure if this is the happiest song about getting a bloody injury, but the only competition I can think is Me And You Against The World by Space, and that&#039;s far less of a rousing folk ballad. This is a song about revelation at the wrong moment. The joy of knowing and the horror of knowing it&#039;s too late. May we find what we&#039;re looking for in time and without this much blood.]]></description>
                <author>Miscellany</author>
                <guid isPermaLink="false">april-24-store-pqq8fky</guid>
                <pubDate>Fri, 24 Apr 2026 22:18:12 +0000</pubDate>
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                <title>April 23 - Color In Your Cheeks</title>
                <link>https://miscellany.pckt.blog/april-23-color-in-your-cheeks-544yv73</link>
                <description><![CDATA[God, I needed this today. One of my favourite Mountain Goats songs for years. The best happy songs are the ones that don&#039;t bullshit you. They don&#039;t pretend that everything&#039;s good, or that evil doesn&#039;t exist. What they tell you is that the world is fucked but that sometimes there&#039;s help. You&#039;re running from something, here&#039;s somewhere to hide. You&#039;re broken, here&#039;s a place to hold your pieces while you work out how the fuck they fit together again. This is a song of dirty hope. Hope with broken n...]]></description>
                <author>Miscellany</author>
                <guid isPermaLink="false">april-23-color-in-your-cheeks-544yv73</guid>
                <pubDate>Thu, 23 Apr 2026 21:09:09 +0000</pubDate>
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                    <item>
                <title>April 22 - World Cylinder</title>
                <link>https://miscellany.pckt.blog/april-22-world-cylinder-rv5duz7</link>
                <description><![CDATA[This is a goodbye. The last song on an EP about last songs. It&#039;s someone not saying what&#039;s happening, but not saying it more blatantly than just saying it. One of the most common sentiments of my life - and one of the ones that gets me twisted around myself the most - is there&#039;s so much to do. It&#039;s not wrong, but it is self defeating. You&#039;ll never do everything, and yet I watch frustrated as my perception of my inaction lets things float past undone. Maybe the insertion of a final, unmovable dea...]]></description>
                <author>Miscellany</author>
                <guid isPermaLink="false">april-22-world-cylinder-rv5duz7</guid>
                <pubDate>Wed, 22 Apr 2026 22:17:14 +0000</pubDate>
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                <title>April 21 - Burned My Tongue</title>
                <link>https://miscellany.pckt.blog/april-21-burned-my-tongue-pqt1fky</link>
                <description><![CDATA[An honest to goodness blues song beginning with the words woke up this morning. This has a wonderful smoky uneasy tone to it of someone fundamentally uncomfortable in the world. Trying to live like they know they&#039;re supposed to live and finding at each point they are the wrong shape for live. It&#039;s gorgeous, awkward, and just a little incredibly angry.]]></description>
                <author>Miscellany</author>
                <guid isPermaLink="false">april-21-burned-my-tongue-pqt1fky</guid>
                <pubDate>Tue, 21 Apr 2026 22:16:07 +0000</pubDate>
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                <title>April 20 - Hotel Road</title>
                <link>https://miscellany.pckt.blog/april-20-hotel-road-54y5v73</link>
                <description><![CDATA[I take back any smack I have talked about previous loud tape recorders. And with that momentary swipe I will sit and just listen to this absolutely lovely relaxing beach song. Simple pastoral lyrics of going back to places filled with ghosts. This is a song about endings, of going back, and the simple act of forgiveness that is returning. There are places I&#039;ll never go back to through circumstances. There are places I&#039;ll never go back to out of choice. But perhaps the most damning are the places...]]></description>
                <author>Miscellany</author>
                <guid isPermaLink="false">april-20-hotel-road-54y5v73</guid>
                <pubDate>Mon, 20 Apr 2026 22:19:07 +0000</pubDate>
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                <title>April 19 - Jenny</title>
                <link>https://miscellany.pckt.blog/april-19-jenny-zc2udj6</link>
                <description><![CDATA[This is the musical equivalent of the moment in a sitcom where someone walks in and everyone applauds. Jenny is a huge figure in the shared fiction that is Mountain Goats songs, a figure of wildness and adoration and chaos and trouble and so much more, and hearing this second song to mention her is like reaching solid ground where the sand underfood it warm and still wet but solid. So, aside from its status as mythology, how is this song? Great, basically. An ode of love and trouble with some re...]]></description>
                <author>Miscellany</author>
                <guid isPermaLink="false">april-19-jenny-zc2udj6</guid>
                <pubDate>Sun, 19 Apr 2026 22:15:16 +0000</pubDate>
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                <title>April 18 - Trans-Jordanian Blues</title>
                <link>https://miscellany.pckt.blog/april-18-trans-jordanian-blues-9d90s7z</link>
                <description><![CDATA[There&#039;s something about a rowdy, revolutionary church song that reaches even to those who were never part of the congregation. I never had a faith to lose, I hnever had a church to find to be rotten, I never had this as a structure to be moved on from. And yet I find myself moved by this both in terms of dancing slightly in my seat and in terms of feeling the intense frustration of the hermit-crab shell of religion getting too constricting for the growing creature of faith. These are weird times...]]></description>
                <author>Miscellany</author>
                <guid isPermaLink="false">april-18-trans-jordanian-blues-9d90s7z</guid>
                <pubDate>Sat, 18 Apr 2026 22:58:42 +0000</pubDate>
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                <title>April 17 - Riches and Wonders</title>
                <link>https://miscellany.pckt.blog/april-17-riches-and-wonders-yayhe17</link>
                <description><![CDATA[You&#039;re taking a nap in the middle of the day with the person you love. The two of you snuggled. Maybe cats but not necessarily cats. And you&#039;re warm and you&#039;re content and you&#039;ve perhaps been apart but are now together. And for a fleeting moment, almost to brief to really register, you think that actually it would be okay if this was it. If everything faded and went now and that was that. And that&#039;s not what this song is about, but that is where my mind went. One of the curiosities of the happie...]]></description>
                <author>Miscellany</author>
                <guid isPermaLink="false">april-17-riches-and-wonders-yayhe17</guid>
                <pubDate>Fri, 17 Apr 2026 23:14:38 +0000</pubDate>
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                <title>April 16 - Fault Lines</title>
                <link>https://miscellany.pckt.blog/april-16-fault-lines-qztf9a9</link>
                <description><![CDATA[This is one of the purest folk songs from this period of the Mountain Goats. It&#039;s an ode to useless material worth and poisoned love: two people who depend on each other to the point where it&#039;s making both of them sick and preventing either of them from leaving. The songs of this period feel like seeds that have been planted and will flourish as time goes on. The lyrical complexity and emotional simplicity sketch a design that later albums will fill in using watercolours, and from these jolly an...]]></description>
                <author>Miscellany</author>
                <guid isPermaLink="false">april-16-fault-lines-qztf9a9</guid>
                <pubDate>Thu, 16 Apr 2026 21:35:58 +0000</pubDate>
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                <title>April 15 - Straight Six</title>
                <link>https://miscellany.pckt.blog/april-15-straight-six-4xe5a1t</link>
                <description><![CDATA[The blurred space between song and poem and fiction sketch is the place where the Mountain Goats live best, and this song is a wonderful example of this, acting as a crack we can look through to see the two occupants of this car in the dark as it rides through the dark of the city. This is our first sight of Jenny, who will become a recurring character to the point of getting her own album, but here she has more name than she does character, and more name than our unnamed narrator. This is a pov...]]></description>
                <author>Miscellany</author>
                <guid isPermaLink="false">april-15-straight-six-4xe5a1t</guid>
                <pubDate>Thu, 16 Apr 2026 21:29:44 +0000</pubDate>
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                <title>April 14 - Balance</title>
                <link>https://miscellany.pckt.blog/april-14-balance-4xyga1t</link>
                <description><![CDATA[Simple but very strong chord progression on this one, which puts me in mind (in feel and lyrical content) of Dilaudid from The Sunset Tree, which feels like a song that will come from this at some point. Mountain Goats songs about relationships crumbling aren&#039;t rare, but this is one of the earliest about a relationship that is simultaneously bad and self perpetuating. It feels like the people trapped in this particular mess of a relationship are going to make it but don&#039;t actually want to. And t...]]></description>
                <author>Miscellany</author>
                <guid isPermaLink="false">april-14-balance-4xyga1t</guid>
                <pubDate>Tue, 14 Apr 2026 22:29:00 +0000</pubDate>
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                <title>April 13 - Fall of the Star High School Running Back</title>
                <link>https://miscellany.pckt.blog/april-13-fall-of-the-star-high-school-running-back-wr8u64p</link>
                <description><![CDATA[This is an interesting song because it sneaks up on you in a way. The story of a high school sport&#039;s star&#039;s fall from grace is fertile and oft visited territory, and I felt like I could hear the line about blowing out his knee before I heard the line about blowing out his knee. But then we get, well, interesting. John is, unsurprisingly, an explicitly political writer when the occasion calls for it, and the second half of this song that deals with the hunger of the prison industrial complex when...]]></description>
                <author>Miscellany</author>
                <guid isPermaLink="false">april-13-fall-of-the-star-high-school-running-back-wr8u64p</guid>
                <pubDate>Mon, 13 Apr 2026 21:51:04 +0000</pubDate>
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                <title>April 12 - The Best Ever Death Metal Band In Denton</title>
                <link>https://miscellany.pckt.blog/april-12-the-best-ever-death-metal-band-in-denton-6u8qkgj</link>
                <description><![CDATA[OK, so we&#039;ve started to hit the songs that I can hear without listening to them. There&#039;s something simple and wonderful about this song, which is a simple yarn about rebellion and friendship and passion and repression and Satan, and that would be enough for it to be a small delight, but there are lines in this that are stamped through me like the words of power on a golem&#039;s forehead. When you punish somebody for dreaming their dream, don&#039;t expect them to thank or forgive you.]]></description>
                <author>Miscellany</author>
                <guid isPermaLink="false">april-12-the-best-ever-death-metal-band-in-denton-6u8qkgj</guid>
                <pubDate>Sun, 12 Apr 2026 22:34:52 +0000</pubDate>
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                <title>April 11 - The Coroner&#039;s Gambit</title>
                <link>https://miscellany.pckt.blog/april-11-the-coroners-gambit-tsjfqge</link>
                <description><![CDATA[And our trilogy of death continues from a different point of view. This is a tremendously lively song for what it represents, with a beat that put me in mind of the best of early Billy Bragg, and the same combination of strumming energy and considered thought. I don&#039;t know other minds enough to know if it makes me incredibly normal or incredibly strange that I can&#039;t imagine the point where not existing would appeal. Like, I get it intellectually. Enough pain, enough distress, enough of the world...]]></description>
                <author>Miscellany</author>
                <guid isPermaLink="false">april-11-the-coroners-gambit-tsjfqge</guid>
                <pubDate>Sat, 11 Apr 2026 22:41:04 +0000</pubDate>
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                <title>April 10 - Shadow Song</title>
                <link>https://miscellany.pckt.blog/april-10-shadow-song-h90at4e</link>
                <description><![CDATA[This is clearly a season of partings, of people going ahead, leaving, whether they mean to or not. When you go (voluntarily or involuntarily) you take parts of people with you. Those parts don&#039;t always last, and it&#039;s not actually a bad thing necessarily that they don&#039;t. But sometimes when you go you go in hope that people will follow. And sometimes when they bid you to save them a place they do so knowing they may not And what matters is not whether the covenant is fulfilled but that it meant en...]]></description>
                <author>Miscellany</author>
                <guid isPermaLink="false">april-10-shadow-song-h90at4e</guid>
                <pubDate>Fri, 10 Apr 2026 22:16:49 +0000</pubDate>
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                <title>April 9 - Bluejays and Cardinals</title>
                <link>https://miscellany.pckt.blog/april-9-bluejays-and-cardinals-pt7sfky</link>
                <description><![CDATA[This is a song aimed at the heavens, under the joyfully lamenting hope that that&#039;s where its intended audience is. There&#039;s something hard to process about songs for people who aren&#039;t necessarily in a position to hear them. Words that you want to elevate beyond the material, but which will fall mostly on the ears of others. I&#039;ve been thinking a lot lately about goodbyes, both the spiritual kind and the material. They&#039;re almost always for the person saying goodbye, not the person leaving. I was sa...]]></description>
                <author>Miscellany</author>
                <guid isPermaLink="false">april-9-bluejays-and-cardinals-pt7sfky</guid>
                <pubDate>Thu, 09 Apr 2026 22:07:25 +0000</pubDate>
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                <title>April 8 - There Will Be No Divorce</title>
                <link>https://miscellany.pckt.blog/april-8-there-will-be-no-divorce-qz079a9</link>
                <description><![CDATA[Well, the world continued. And so did we. And this is a simple song about small moments of love. If you&#039;ve ever been awake late at night past the time when the person you love is awake, and you&#039;ve looked over and listened to the sound of their breathing, and loved that sound, because it was from them and because it was keeping them alive, you will know the feeling of this song. Small moments of observing in the quiet lovely dark. Of thinking how lucky we are that we get this. All of this.]]></description>
                <author>Miscellany</author>
                <guid isPermaLink="false">april-8-there-will-be-no-divorce-qz079a9</guid>
                <pubDate>Wed, 08 Apr 2026 21:46:27 +0000</pubDate>
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                <title>April 7 - We Were Patriots</title>
                <link>https://miscellany.pckt.blog/april-7-we-were-patriots-s2pgz85</link>
                <description><![CDATA[I don&#039;t know if I have anything to say about this song today. I&#039;m in a place of horror. I hope that at some point I look back and see what a silly thing this was to be horrified by, but right now the situation with Iran has me feeling entirely hopeless and the concept of patriots fills me with revulsion. I&#039;m sorry, John, your song deserves better than this.]]></description>
                <author>Miscellany</author>
                <guid isPermaLink="false">april-7-we-were-patriots-s2pgz85</guid>
                <pubDate>Tue, 07 Apr 2026 21:31:14 +0000</pubDate>
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                <title>April 5th - Onions</title>
                <link>https://miscellany.pckt.blog/april-5th-onions-1wsw8wv</link>
                <description><![CDATA[It&#039;s been spring already for either a month or about 2 weeks depending on where you start (I, a weirdo, think it&#039;s spring from March the first). Long enough for things to start waking up. My lilac tree, planted to replace the one the gardeners killed, is growing for the first time. There&#039;s asparagus shooting up in places we thought were just dead soil, and here we have a thick and loamy song of growth and rebirth. John didn&#039;t calculate for this to come out on Easter Sunday, I know. But it did. A...]]></description>
                <author>Miscellany</author>
                <guid isPermaLink="false">april-5th-onions-1wsw8wv</guid>
                <pubDate>Mon, 06 Apr 2026 22:38:55 +0000</pubDate>
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                <title>April 4 - Elijah</title>
                <link>https://miscellany.pckt.blog/april-4-elijah-ts39qge</link>
                <description><![CDATA[There&#039;s something fascinating as someone who grew up without any religion of seeing the shapes that belief makes when it is instilled but then carefully considered. There are aspects of imagery and language that to me are learned and to some people are second nature, and it creates as much of a gap as trying to swear in a foreign language. My only theism is cultural theism, which is basically those of the trappings that seem most marketable. So, it&#039;s easy to hide from e in religion. To make the ...]]></description>
                <author>Miscellany</author>
                <guid isPermaLink="false">april-4-elijah-ts39qge</guid>
                <pubDate>Mon, 06 Apr 2026 22:31:01 +0000</pubDate>
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                <title>April 3 - Island Garden Song</title>
                <link>https://miscellany.pckt.blog/april-3-island-garden-song-h9xht4e</link>
                <description><![CDATA[Tape hum, I have missed you. And the songs have moved on since you and I last broke bread. This is a small pastoral about disappearing. A simple idea that commits to its imagery rather than using it as disguise. It&#039;s a hymn to the pleasures of leaving, to the joys of the solitary, to the feeling not of being nowhere but of being not somewhere. I have idle visions sometimes of what would happen if I was cut off from the world. I think the earliest version was if you had to stay home with nothing ...]]></description>
                <author>Miscellany</author>
                <guid isPermaLink="false">april-3-island-garden-song-h9xht4e</guid>
                <pubDate>Mon, 06 Apr 2026 22:23:43 +0000</pubDate>
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                <title>April 2 - Cool Hundred</title>
                <link>https://miscellany.pckt.blog/april-2-cool-hundred-h9xyt4e</link>
                <description><![CDATA[This song doesn&#039;t exist. Neither does this blog post.]]></description>
                <author>Miscellany</author>
                <guid isPermaLink="false">april-2-cool-hundred-h9xyt4e</guid>
                <pubDate>Sun, 05 Apr 2026 22:26:52 +0000</pubDate>
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                <title>March 31 - Horseradish Road</title>
                <link>https://miscellany.pckt.blog/march-31-horseradish-road-zbpkdj6</link>
                <description><![CDATA[I&#039;m going to say something odd about this one. Some background first. I&#039;m a later Mountain Goats fan. Didn&#039;t listen to them until probably 2019. First album was The Sunset Tree. I think that sets the scene as to how this band first grounded with me, as a fairly mature and developed musical combination. One of the things I have most enjoyed about going back through their catalogue for the last three months is seeing all the places where they began, the bits that didn&#039;t work, the interesting exper...]]></description>
                <author>Miscellany</author>
                <guid isPermaLink="false">march-31-horseradish-road-zbpkdj6</guid>
                <pubDate>Sat, 04 Apr 2026 22:06:53 +0000</pubDate>
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                <title>March 30 - Sure Do Love You Baby But I Can&#039;t Do 60 No More</title>
                <link>https://miscellany.pckt.blog/march-30-sure-do-love-you-baby-but-i-cant-do-60-no-more-s201z85</link>
                <description><![CDATA[This is kind of a tough one. It&#039;s unreleased, the only recording seems to be a single recorder version of a performance where John was belting it out and his voice was suffering as a result. It touches on a lot of John of This Period themes. Strained love, moving to new places, trying to work out what a comfortable life is and if one&#039;s even worthwhile. This one gets a bit lost in its details. Better formed versions of these ideas made it further out into the world.]]></description>
                <author>Miscellany</author>
                <guid isPermaLink="false">march-30-sure-do-love-you-baby-but-i-cant-do-60-no-more-s201z85</guid>
                <pubDate>Fri, 03 Apr 2026 22:12:50 +0000</pubDate>
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                <title>March 29 - Shower</title>
                <link>https://miscellany.pckt.blog/march-29-shower-uvb8g9n</link>
                <description><![CDATA[It&#039;s October 2008. You&#039;re in a small sports bar next to a Best Western in a town in West Virginia whose name you genuinely do not remember. You drove half of the day and say in the passenger seat for the other half while your wife drove. You&#039;re going from North Carolina to Ohio to visit a good friend who performed your wedding ceremony and used to be a pro wrestler. Your mind is in a hundred tired places for a hundred tired reasons. Earlier today, while sitting in a passenger seat as the Ford tr...]]></description>
                <author>Miscellany</author>
                <guid isPermaLink="false">march-29-shower-uvb8g9n</guid>
                <pubDate>Thu, 02 Apr 2026 22:30:48 +0000</pubDate>
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                <title>March 28 - Commandante</title>
                <link>https://miscellany.pckt.blog/march-28-commandante-wr9c64p</link>
                <description><![CDATA[OK, so rhyming Brendan Behan and Tripoli, and puts me entirely on this song&#039;s side, and boy is that ever just the start. John is flying with this one, soaring through Americana like a pair of bottle rockets, in a Chairman Mao coat with a jetpack strapped to his back. The joy in this song is infectious and earned, it&#039;s a pleasure and delight in the weird and nerdy, the things that hit the inner value of cool which is nothing to do with what other people think. This is a song at play, and every pa...]]></description>
                <author>Miscellany</author>
                <guid isPermaLink="false">march-28-commandante-wr9c64p</guid>
                <pubDate>Wed, 01 Apr 2026 22:07:21 +0000</pubDate>
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                <title>March 27 - Genesis 19:1-2</title>
                <link>https://miscellany.pckt.blog/march-27-genesis-191-2-21jrbg2</link>
                <description><![CDATA[Hitting the rough edges of (deeply religious) punk here, as John looks at the parts of the bible most likely to get him in trouble with certain other people of faith. It&#039;s a funny thing, wickedness. Or the assumption of wickedness. Collective punishment is justified by the idea that everyone deserves it. And once you start thinking that it&#039;s not about what people did but what they are. I can&#039;t write much today. I just found out that an old friend who was in my rpg group but dropped out of it for...]]></description>
                <author>Miscellany</author>
                <guid isPermaLink="false">march-27-genesis-191-2-21jrbg2</guid>
                <pubDate>Tue, 31 Mar 2026 22:30:26 +0000</pubDate>
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                <title>March 26 - Crows</title>
                <link>https://miscellany.pckt.blog/march-26-crows-1wfb8wv</link>
                <description><![CDATA[This song begins at the intersection of a variety of John&#039;s abilities hitting their full maturity. The guitar work, confidence of voice, and beauty of the lyrics all come together into a rather perfect piece of folk music about the past becoming even more the past. I&#039;ve lived in North Carolina, not as rural as the parts in this song, but not that far off, and the image of the past being both swallowed up by the sea of nature and torn up by the march of the present is a really compelling one to m...]]></description>
                <author>Miscellany</author>
                <guid isPermaLink="false">march-26-crows-1wfb8wv</guid>
                <pubDate>Mon, 30 Mar 2026 21:57:34 +0000</pubDate>
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                <title>March 24 - Dutch Orchestra Blues</title>
                <link>https://miscellany.pckt.blog/march-24-dutch-orchestra-blues-5e2dv73</link>
                <description><![CDATA[Not a blues, let&#039;s start there. Which is pedantic and silly about a song that&#039;s joyful and silly. And also sad. This is a sing about faith in the hidden things. About yearning for the reassurance that better things are happening somewhere, just a little too quiet for you to hear but there nonetheless. I find songs of faith fascinating not because I have no faith or because there aren&#039;t things that I need to be true but because my own... whatever it is... operates on different terms. I fear uncer...]]></description>
                <author>Miscellany</author>
                <guid isPermaLink="false">march-24-dutch-orchestra-blues-5e2dv73</guid>
                <pubDate>Sat, 28 Mar 2026 23:15:36 +0000</pubDate>
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                <title>March 23 - Cobscook Bay</title>
                <link>https://miscellany.pckt.blog/march-23-cobscook-bay-pt5qfky</link>
                <description><![CDATA[I don&#039;t know if this is the first time I&#039;ve heard an electric guitar in a Mountain Goats song, but it&#039;s certainly one of the earliest examples to leap out at me, an electric sound with vibrato buit no distortion, in a full background of instrumentation. This song is a kind of Walden-by-the-sea for me, a semi-pastoral of life away from life, with occasional visitors, beautiful mornings, and a world shrunk down small to the point where you can hear the waves break and the trees grow. There&#039;s miser...]]></description>
                <author>Miscellany</author>
                <guid isPermaLink="false">march-23-cobscook-bay-pt5qfky</guid>
                <pubDate>Fri, 27 Mar 2026 22:43:07 +0000</pubDate>
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                <title>March 22 - Golden Boy</title>
                <link>https://miscellany.pckt.blog/march-22-golden-boy-5edzv73</link>
                <description><![CDATA[What a delightful whimsical little song. Edges of Big Rock Candy Mountain, with the sort of sincerity of someone who with their entire heart and soul believe they are being a lil goof. Done with anything less than sincerity, done with horror of horrors irony this would be insufferable. it would have a sneer on its lips as it told you to be good and get to heaven because you can&#039;t buy Golden Boy Peanuts in hell. But this is sincere, and I&#039;m sure the peanuts taste like goddamn heaven. Golden Boy a...]]></description>
                <author>Miscellany</author>
                <guid isPermaLink="false">march-22-golden-boy-5edzv73</guid>
                <pubDate>Thu, 26 Mar 2026 23:18:38 +0000</pubDate>
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                <title>March 21 - Treetop Song</title>
                <link>https://miscellany.pckt.blog/march-21-treetop-song-h95xt4e</link>
                <description><![CDATA[I can feel the landscape of this song. It&#039;s an early morning, some fog in the air, and there&#039;s a calm in the air. And somewhere within that a fantasy made of choppy guitar and harmonica. It&#039;s a small one, this. A quick scene that is the edge of pastoral, with a note of energy that becomes almost fantastic. The song and the singer take off in unison, leaving us in the beautiful calm of the treetops.]]></description>
                <author>Miscellany</author>
                <guid isPermaLink="false">march-21-treetop-song-h95xt4e</guid>
                <pubDate>Wed, 25 Mar 2026 22:00:58 +0000</pubDate>
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                <title>March 20 - Narakaloka</title>
                <link>https://miscellany.pckt.blog/march-20-narakaloka-wrfz64p</link>
                <description><![CDATA[Welcome back tape hum. John sets a table here, a beautiful domestic scene of a garden being planted, a kitchen being outfitted, a series of events that will survive the singer. This is a small gem, a bleak song of hope. Things pass, but we can make sure things endure. The seeds we plant will grow one day. The spices we store in our kitchen will be opened and used. The world will live on. And that&#039;s hope, of a sort.]]></description>
                <author>Miscellany</author>
                <guid isPermaLink="false">march-20-narakaloka-wrfz64p</guid>
                <pubDate>Wed, 25 Mar 2026 21:55:36 +0000</pubDate>
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                <title>March 19 - Song for the Julian Calendar</title>
                <link>https://miscellany.pckt.blog/march-19-song-for-the-julian-calendar-4xcda1t</link>
                <description><![CDATA[A couple of songs into Full Force Galesberg and the first thing that is striking me about this record is how much fuller the sound is than what has come before. Not just that there are more instruments, but that this album&#039;s exploration of the folk space is lending itself to different musical cadences and concordances better than previous multi-instrumental tracks. There&#039;s been a lot of growth here and it lands the band in a very interesting place. Unsurprisingly from the title, this is in many ...]]></description>
                <author>Miscellany</author>
                <guid isPermaLink="false">march-19-song-for-the-julian-calendar-4xcda1t</guid>
                <pubDate>Tue, 24 Mar 2026 21:14:36 +0000</pubDate>
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                <title>March 18 - Original Air-Blue Gown</title>
                <link>https://miscellany.pckt.blog/march-18-original-air-blue-gown-86jxnwy</link>
                <description><![CDATA[It&#039;s late. Not absurdly late, not so late it&#039;s actually early again. But, like 1:30. There&#039;s a party going on nearby, and you&#039;re not quite at it. You were at it, but the house has a porch and you didn&#039;t want that many people near you. You&#039;re talking to a couple of people, maybe one person, in a hushed voice. About what, you&#039;re not sure. it felt profound and then it&#039;s gone. If you were drunk you&#039;re not any more, but you&#039;re not sober either. You exist in the quiet soft joy of the late dark night. ...]]></description>
                <author>Miscellany</author>
                <guid isPermaLink="false">march-18-original-air-blue-gown-86jxnwy</guid>
                <pubDate>Tue, 24 Mar 2026 21:04:30 +0000</pubDate>
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                <title>March 17 - Calcutta</title>
                <link>https://miscellany.pckt.blog/march-17-calcutta-ptrxfky</link>
                <description><![CDATA[It&#039;s not March 17, it&#039;s March 23rd, and I have the kind of cold and headache that mean I&#039;m only vaguely tethered to reality. Perfect time to hear a Mountain Goats song from the fringes of existence. This was apparently only played live once. Hard to think why, as it&#039;s a perfectly nicely performed story-song that doesn&#039;t reach a chorus but doesn&#039;t outstay its welcome. It&#039;s potentially a bit orientalist, as pretty much any song by a white person about India is going to be, but there isn&#039;t a reason...]]></description>
                <author>Miscellany</author>
                <guid isPermaLink="false">march-17-calcutta-ptrxfky</guid>
                <pubDate>Mon, 23 Mar 2026 20:40:51 +0000</pubDate>
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                <title>March 16 - Cutter</title>
                <link>https://miscellany.pckt.blog/march-16-cutter-qzvg9a9</link>
                <description><![CDATA[OK, so full disclosure: I&#039;ve been on holiday and am currently sick for the second time since the last block update I did. This is why these are late and why this is incoherent. Makes sense therefore that this is a sort of hidden track, with only live versions. Adding to that, March 16 is John&#039;s birthday. Adding to that, March 16 is one of my two anniversaries. This is a song about things being bad and getting communications from a distance, and they don&#039;t make your troubles go away but they do g...]]></description>
                <author>Miscellany</author>
                <guid isPermaLink="false">march-16-cutter-qzvg9a9</guid>
                <pubDate>Sun, 22 Mar 2026 20:57:48 +0000</pubDate>
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                <title>March 15 - Masher</title>
                <link>https://miscellany.pckt.blog/march-15-masher-tsk4qge</link>
                <description><![CDATA[Floating away on the guitar of this song, so much of a woodland pastoral, the sound of double the expected strings out under a canopy of trees. This is a song of solitude, which is a different thing from loneliness, it&#039;s the sound of someone far beyond society. This song is gorgeous. That&#039;s not a particularly sophisticated take, but it&#039;s one of the ones where the simplicity and beauty of the lyrics sits perfectly with the rolling complicated riff to create a feeling of chaotic nature. May we all...]]></description>
                <author>Miscellany</author>
                <guid isPermaLink="false">march-15-masher-tsk4qge</guid>
                <pubDate>Sun, 15 Mar 2026 21:52:00 +0000</pubDate>
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                <title>March 14 - New Britain</title>
                <link>https://miscellany.pckt.blog/march-14-new-britain-qzr69a9</link>
                <description><![CDATA[Mountain Goats do folk horror. The discordant guitars are a particular delight here with the imaginative language of a strange inhabitant of a strange albion. This is a beautiful and strange land of odd landscapes and odd feelings, and at their heart the human moment of seeing the person you love behind the love you have for them. Speaking of Britain and strange landscapes. I&#039;m not in England right now. I&#039;m on holiday in Cyprus. This is a profoundly weird time to be on holiday in Cyprus. I&#039;m in ...]]></description>
                <author>Miscellany</author>
                <guid isPermaLink="false">march-14-new-britain-qzr69a9</guid>
                <pubDate>Sat, 14 Mar 2026 20:37:34 +0000</pubDate>
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                <title>March 13 - An Inscription at Salonae</title>
                <link>https://miscellany.pckt.blog/march-13-an-inscription-at-salonae-yatwe17</link>
                <description><![CDATA[The rhythm of this reminded me of Santa Monica by Everclear, although that&#039;s where the similarity ended. It&#039;s a wonderfully calm and matter of fact delivery for lyrical material that starts in the mythological and goes upwards from there. Often John sits at points in the alignment that are directly between history, mythology, and religion, and is good enough at allusion to make the exact positioning a matter of some nuance. This definitely falls into a human area, almost colloquial, with a story...]]></description>
                <author>Miscellany</author>
                <guid isPermaLink="false">march-13-an-inscription-at-salonae-yatwe17</guid>
                <pubDate>Fri, 13 Mar 2026 22:21:27 +0000</pubDate>
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                <title>March 12 - Raid on Entebbe</title>
                <link>https://miscellany.pckt.blog/march-12-raid-on-entebbe-s2r9z85</link>
                <description><![CDATA[There&#039;s a strange moment at this start of this song where for just a moment I hear a very familiar guitar part, only... it&#039;s not familiar yet. It&#039;s inevitable for a songwriter who has written (as can be seen in this project) 366 songs, but for just a few bars I heard Amy, AKA Spent Gladiator. She won&#039;t be back for quite a while, which made this a bit like seeing a childhood photo of a friend you didn&#039;t meet until their thirties. Anyway, this actual song rather than my brainfarts: I enjoyed the f...]]></description>
                <author>Miscellany</author>
                <guid isPermaLink="false">march-12-raid-on-entebbe-s2r9z85</guid>
                <pubDate>Thu, 12 Mar 2026 23:34:51 +0000</pubDate>
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