All Eternals Deck, part twelve of thirteen.

I'm blogging on The Mountain Goats' new album All Eternals Deck until I feel like stopping.

I feel weird writing about “Never Quite Free.” You see, this song is not for me. It's for survivors. So if this song sounds like a series of positive-thinking platitudes — “you'll sleep better when you think you've come back from the brink,” “it's so good to learn that from right here the view goes on forever” — I have to admit that maybe I should just let a comforting song be a comforting song.

But that reading doesn't quite hold. You've got the title of the song, and the ominous warnings: “when you see him, you'll know.” Life gets better, the careful listener hears, but the past will sneak up on you. This aspect of the song plays against the optimistic sentiment of the poppy arrangement, to moving effect. The music asks us to forget the darkness completely, but the lyrics tell us to think twice.

And, once again, there's something eschatological in all this.