Cleaning Crew[1]

Lyrics

You were passed out on the sofa
Cigarette burns and coffee stains
Loose change in your pocket
Naltrexone[2] in your veins

They got a scanner at the airport now
And a dropout in a Kevlar vest[3]
I can hear the timer
Ticking in my chest

What are you gonna do?
What are you gonna do?
What are you gonna do when the cleaning crew
comes through?

When you get out on your own again
If you ever do shake free
If you find yourself in Portland[4]
Ask about me

Dig up the first revision
The one who's got less to lose
Look on every lamppost[5]
From here to Baton Rouge[6]

Ask yourself one question
Then ask yourself again

What are you gonna do?
What are you gonna do?
What are you gonna do when the cleaning crew
comes through?

It's better if you have a plan
It's better if you have a plan[7]

I saw the future in an oil slick[8]
It told me what I needed to know
Leave a little stain behind you everywhere you go[9]

Banter

Live Performances

Footnotes

1. Subtitle: "The next best thing to an actual goodbye"
2. Naltrexone, also known by the trade name "vivitrol", is a medication prescribed for alcohol use disorder and other substance use disorders. It can be given as a monthly injection, especially before someone discharges from an inpatient or residential treatment facility, to help them maintain sobriety.
3. Though the timeline is nonlinear, the events of the album seem to mostly take place in the mid-1980s, which aligns with the introduction of metal detectors in American airports in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
4. Portland is the setting of many Mountain Goats songs, especially on We Shall All Be Healed.
5. Missing person signs are often stapled or glued to lampposts, a practice that was especially common prior to the ubiquity of the internet and digital social networks.
6. Baton Rouge is the capital of the US state of Louisiana. Likely a metrical choice rather than narrative, though I would love to find out I'm wrong.
7. That sound is Jon Wurster hitting a vibraslap, a decision that has brought the curator of this website much delight as a former percussionist. A vibraslap is a percussion instrument that the player hits to create a rattling sound. It is not standard equipment on a drum kit but SHOULD BE.
8. Ancient Greek eleomancy involved using oil as a method of augury by dripping it on a surface and divining meaning from the patterns. This may also be a reference to Black Pear Tree, which references both divination and oil ("Blossoms black and sweet as Texas crude").
9. The Original Sin in Christianity is sometimes described as a "stain on the heart". (I am not enough of a Christian to explain this in a way that makes sense, due to it does not make sense to me beyond "apparently even babies suck").