May 4 - First Few Desperate hours

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'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've done biting you in the ass, or even people seeing reprisal for past actions, but more in the sense that if you have a problem, and you're the problem, and you leave, then the problem comes with you. Not straight away, and you can kid yourself for a few days while you are essentially on holiday in a new life, but all the reminders of who you actually are will find you and drag you back into your old ways. Here it's physically in the form of a truck of belongings, but depending on your life it can be in all sorts of forms. Old habits showing up again. Things you promised you'd do differently this time being done the same old way. The ending of the honeymoon in the new place. As Ben Folds said "Everywhere I go, damn, there I am".