July 2 - If You See Light

After an album of deeply personal songs where the identity of the "I" was known, it's interesting to get to a series of Mountain Goats songs from points of view that are more distant, more fictional, or otherwise exploring new ideas. John is nothing if not a sucker for a concept album, and when the concept changes sometimes it changes.

This is a song about solitude, but a different kind of solitude from a lot of the rest of this album. It's solitude when you are kept apart from others by circumstance or imposition. it's equally solitude when you keep yourself apart despite the efforts of others. This idea of fleeing, hiding, treating others as danger is one that John comes back to several times. Heretic Pride, a treat of a song on the next album, deals with similar material in what we might think of as the scene after this one. What happens when - not out of your choice - solitude ends?

We're moving into new spaces, I'll be very interested to see what they are.