The Mountain Goats - done bleeding, 2019

“Done Bleeding” is the first song on the 2019 album “In League with Dragons”. John Darnielle has said the song is about his decision and time leaving his job as a psychiatric nurse at Metropolitan State Hospital in Norwalk, California."

The Mountain Goats - the diaz brothers, 2012

"How many times have you heard “The Diaz Brothers?” If you have been a fan of the Mountain Goats to any degree for more than about ten years as of this writing, that number is probably very high. It’s just one of those songs that you can come back to again and again."

The Mountain Goats - harlem roulette, 2012

"This is a song about the death of Frankie Lymon, who was a wonderful young singer. Then he wasn't young anymore and his voice changed and the world had no further use for him. But he kept trying to work because that was sort of the only line of work he'd ever had. And, uh, he scored a recording contract with a tiny little label out of Harlem called Roulette, there were a lot of tiny little labels in the 1960s, and they let him track like fifteen demos in one night, and he did that, and got a couple hundred bucks, and he went and got some heroin, as you do when you get a couple hundred bucks, and died in his mother's house that night. This is called 'Harlem Roulette'."

The Mountain Goats - cry for judas, 2012

"It's a song about the shame that you carry within you throughout the world and that you can never seem to shrug yourself free of. You will get free of it someday, but I personally can't tell you how because I don't know."

The Mountain Goats - autoclave live, 2008

“Autoclave” is a song concerned mainly with one single metaphor, a metaphor of such shining clarity that it makes me smile even when it makes me flinch. My heart’s an autoclave. An autoclave is a piece of equipment that sterilizes scientific tools with heat and pressure. They are pretty terrifying but they are mostly clinical, effective. My heart’s an autoclave, a thing that crushes. Your heart is meant to sterilize, your heart is constructed with scientific precision to kill everything inside of it that lives. Nothing could survive there even if it wanted to and at this point, nothing wants to. Your heart pulverizes all good feelings that get within a city block of it."

The Mountain Goats - rain in soho live, 2019

"Rain in Soho passionately paraphrases the Smiths (“There’s a club where you’d like to go…” ) and mourns Soho goth club the Batcave. By the final encore of The Best Ever Death Metal Band in Denton, he has the whole crowd feasting on his banter and singing his words, including “Hail Satan!” What a shame Andrew Eldritch wasn’t here to see it."

The Mountain Goats - andrew eldritch is moving back to leeds live, 2017

"Andrew Eldritch is the frontman of the British post-punk band The Sisters of Mercy."

The Mountain Goats - younger, 2019

"So I started basing the song using my present-day skill set on this old riff. And then the lyrics were informed by the fact that I was dredging something up from when I lived in a studio apartment in employee housing at a state psychiatric hospital."

The Mountain Goats - clemency for the wizard king, 2019

"It is a song about how if you are in the tribe that serves and worships the wizard king, and he gets taken prisoner by some evil-minded people who don't understand what he's all about, it's your job to go and demand that he be granted clemency."

The Mountain Goats - get famous live, 2021

"Whereas it seems to mess with people really bad, it seems like the younger you get famous, the worse it is for you. So the song is a curse, right, the song is, I just thought, that’s the worst thing you can wish on somebody."

The Mountain Goats - autoclave, 2008

"I was in Alaska when I read about the discovery of a life-form that can not only survive an autoclave (The instrument used for sterilizing surgical instruments; It's supposed to kill any and all bacteria on the tools), but which seems to really enjoy the whole autoclave scene: at temperatures fatal to all other life forms, this bacteria would begin to breed. Naturally this got me to thinking about people whose hearts involuntarily pulverize any good feelings that come within a city block of them."

The Mountain Goats - andrew eldritch is moving back to leeds, 2017

"First single “Andrew Eldritch Is Moving Back To Leeds” is a sort of story-song about the frontman of goth overlords the Sisters Of Mercy."

The Mountain Goats - rain in soho, 2017

"The lyric "There's a club where you'd like to go / You could meet someone who's lost like you" is a reference to The Smith's song 'How Soon Is Now'. D. B. Cooper is an infamous, anonymous plane hijacker who stole $200,000 and has never been found. The Batcave was a nightclub in London, considered a birthplace of goth subculture. The line "No greater love than to lay my life down for a friend" is derived from John 15:13. The lines "Children piping in the main square / But no one’s dancing / No one’s dancing down there" and "We played for you but you would not sing" recall Matthew 11:16-17 (compare the lyrics of Matthew 11:14-19 from The Life of the World in Flux)."