Music: "Up The Wolves" by The Mountain Goats

Normally I don’t write about songs and lyrics. The reason for that might be a certain lack of specific taste for music that I did or didn’t develop over the years. Nevertheless, this one I found interesting:

I didn’t really love it when we had to do interpretation work on poetry at school. What’s the use of that anyway? As far as I experienced it you can never be certain about the meaning of any phrase in any poem or lyrics unless you ask the composer, poet or writer himself (or herself). And even then you can never be sure about anything. However, this song by The Mountain Goats caught my attention when I watched The Walking Dead. It was released in 2005 and combines elements of revenge, relief, and maybe a sense of revolution. “There'll always be a few things, maybe several things / That you're gonna find really difficult to forgive” – But the day will come when these feelings will fall off eventually. In this song the great relief culminates in revenge, even brutality to an epic extend: “I'm gonna bribe the officials / I'm gonna kill all the judges / It's gonna take you people years / To recover from all of the damage.” But what is the actual message this song carries to the listener’s minds? Let’s ask singer John Darnielle himself:

“I'm always trying to figure out what to say about this god damn song. Part of me wants to say look it's about revenge, but as soon as I say that... no, that's not quite it. Part of me wants to say it's about the satisfaction of not needing revenge... and I say no, that some new age stuff. I think it's a song about the moment in your quest for revenge when you learn to embrace the futility of it. The moment when you know that the thing you want is ridiculous and pompous and a terrible thing to want anyway. The direction in which you're headed is not the direction in which you want to go, yet you're going to head that way a while longer anyway cause that's just the kind of person you are.” (Darnielle at Bowery Ballroom, 2007)

Thus, the chorus becomes the most important part of this song:

“Our mother has been absent

Ever since we founded Rome

But there's gonna be a party

When the wolf comes home.”

Romulus and Remus, the two wolves that founded the Eternal City, were abandoned by their mother. But nevertheless, Darnielle makes them having a party when she returns. This song is about how you’re going to be alright, Darnielle said at another occasion. So, revenge might be the wrong way to go and in the end it’s a path you eventually don’t even find worth going. And in my point of view, that is a very encouraging conclusion and a nice message, too. One day...? – One day I don’t even care anymore and it will be quite well.