July 17 - Wizard Buys A Hat
f you were to map out all of the Mountain Goats discography on a piece of paper, or a 3d display, or some other way of doing such an obviously absurd thing, and on that map or whatever you found Up The Wolves and then you found Training Montage, Wizard Buys A Hat would be the exact midpoint.
Or it wouldn't. The visual metaphor is incoherent. Sorry.
What I'm trying to say is that "Character plots revenge" is a genre in songs by John Darnielle, and at one end of that scale you have "...and knows it won't work and they won't be believed but they need to do it anyway" and at the other end you have "...and it will be the most awesome shit that's ever happened and they will roundhouse kick Vishnu's jaw off". And Wizard Buys A Hat sits squarely at "...and even if this doesn't work they're taking some of these fuckers down too".
This is a nervous song, bordering on paranoid, of waiting for Them to come, without the most defined sense of who They are. It's vibrating with energy and that gives it brilliance. That and a really great name.
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