No Children
Lyrics
I hope that our few remaining friends
Give up on trying to save us
I hope we come up with a failsafe plot
To piss off the dumb few that forgave us
I hope the fences we mended
Fall down beneath their own weight
And I hope we hang on past the last exit
I hope it's already too late
And I hope the junkyard a few blocks from here
Someday burns down
And I hope the rising black smoke carries me far away
And I never come back to this town
Again in my life
I hope I lie
And tell everyone you were a good wife
And I hope you die
I hope we both die
I hope I cut myself shaving tomorrow
I hope it bleeds all day long
Our friends say it's darkest before the sun rises
We're pretty sure they're all wrong
I hope it stays dark forever
I hope the worst isn't over
And I hope you blink before I do
Yeah I hope I never get sober
And I hope when you think of me years down the line
You can't find one good thing to say
And I'd hope that if I found the strength to walk out
You'd stay the hell out of my way
I am drowning
There is no sign of land
You are coming down with me
Hand in unlovable hand
And I hope you die
I hope we both die
Banter
- This is a song I wanna play, this is a song that I want you to sing with me, and maybe for me for most of the song, so that I can stand up here play my guitar with my band and Owen over here on the piano. And this is a song about the moment, that I hope you don't have, but really, if we study odds and so forth, some of you are gonna have, the moment and when it comes, you'll be all bummed and stuff. Because you say, shoot, I've invested a lot of time and love into this marriage and now, now I seem to have - you know, you look at the wedding album sometimes, drinking, and go wow, all of the hope and promise of that day comes down to one bottle of generic tequila. And may god help and preserve the person who tries to pry it from my angry hands. (2009-12-01 Webster Hall)
- It's been two years that, for the sake of our own mental health, you have to bottle the rage up a little bit. There are plenty of people who are richly deserving of it. All the prophets have very stern words for leaders of nations who don't take care of their people. For the unwise leader, Jeremiah and Isaiah have very strong words indeed. But when it actually comes time, you have to pick your battles. You can't be sitting around simmering with rage all day. Or can you? But in the event that you need an outlet for it, well, in 2001, on a plane from Des Moines to Tallahassee, I got an idea, and I wrote a song, this was that song. I'm told it's occasionally useful. (2021-08-06 The Orange Peel)
- This is a very sentimental number. When you hear that chord, you know it's probably gonna be the last song you hear at the Mountain Goats show. The one that went viral on TikTok last year. Resulting in the unique pressure on a human being that few will know of having a manager going, are you sure you don't wanna shoot a video where you do the dance? And me, having been continuously online since December of 1994, going, no, I think any short term gain from the 56 year old dad doing the tiktok dance, will quickly be obviated by the fact that it's a 56 year old dad doing the tiktok dance. I am ageless and I am eternal and I will never die, but I know my limits. Friends, I could have done that tiktok dance better than anybody on the planet. I could have taken lessons. At balanchine studios, I could have rehearsed for 8 hours a day and been the absolute exemplar of the form and it would have been approximately two tenths of a second before someone went "that guy thinks he's doing the dance". So therefore friends I did not do the dance, and it was so wild, for a little brief window there were people showing up at Mountain Goats shows who clearly did not know the rest of the catalog. And it gave me - I mean, I'm not really a sadist in any true sense of the word - but I took a sick and prideless pleasure in seeing the people who were waiting for No Children. And only for no children. Growing progressively more irritated with the pleasure and the joy of the other people in the room. It's an amazing dynamic, it's like an ourobouros, you get happier about the stuff, they get madder it's not No Children. And then when it comes, it's like if you throw a tantrum when you're a child, and the tantrum is so good, you really give your all to it, and the parents who know they're not supposed to relent go, I'm gonna give them the candy bar, I can't. I just wanna go to bed. we gotta let em win this one time. Give 'em the candy bar. But if your tantrum lasted too long, then the candy bar doesn't taste good. You sit there eating, licking your own tears up off the Baby Ruth. I don't actually know this firsthand, I'm just thinking about it. This is a song about licking your own tears from the sweet plate before you. (2023-07-13 The Vanguard)
- There's a thing John Jacobs of the power team used to do. Literally no one knows what I'm talking about. Fellas, I hope you like that groove, 'cause this is gonna take a minute. The power team was a team of Christian evangelicals who pumped iron. they were big strapping fellows with gigantic chests, huge biceps, and they were taking steroids or my name's not John Darnielle, because they were huge. huge dudes. and they did big tent revival type stuff. they would blow up hot water balloons with their lungs, blow them up until they exploded, for Jesus. [cheering] break bricks with their heads for Jesus. It was the 80s. It was a different time. As evangelists, this was their chief skill set. When it came time to actually do the thing evangelists do, which is exetemporaneously and improvisationally explain why the love of Jesus is needed in your life, they were less good at that. So they would break some bricks, but then they had to take the microphone because every evangelist has a deep thirst for the microphone. Don't ask me how I know. But they had a technique that they would use, and it's sort of like, the kind of thing you might learn in a marketing seminar. Instead of saying to you, hey, Birmingham is a nice place, I'd say, don't you know that Birmingham is a nice place? and I've already - I've given you - it's the same thing pickup artists do. I've sort of let you know that you already know something and we agree on it. The single rhetorical trick that the power team had was the phrase 'how many of you know', and they would use it to stall for time. Because they weren't quite sure where they were going in their evangelism. "How many of you know...that John 3:16 says that he...God so loved the world...that he sent his only son Christ Jesus that he might die that you might die but lived? How many of you know that when God said that -" and then there'd be a long pause. But they weould have you already, because you're already supposed to know where they're going, so when they come up with their next line, you're already sort of - you bought in. Unless you go 'nah, not me, I'm not one of the people who know, John Jacobs of the power team.' I mention all of this to you by way of saying this is a fun thing to do. I might ask you, how many of you know [cheering] that when you go to the courthouse you have to dress nice. Because it's supposed to increase your chances with the judge. Maybe he's already predisposed against you. maybe he doesn't like your side of the argument. Maybe he knows somebody who knows you and doesn't like them, but maybe if you wear a nice tie, maybe the judge will be persuaded by your tie. How many of you know that when you need a nice tie you can't seem to find one? How many of you know that your best tie will have a stain on it that morning? [JD starts to sort of sing, getting more and more into it] When you drive up there to the courthouse, how many of you know that you won't find a parking lot with a single space in it, on the morning when you show up to divorce court? how many of you know that you'll be having second thoughts, but it's too late for second thoughts, you're already ankle deep in lawyers fees and they're rising up to your knees? how many of you know that when you leave to the courtroom that day, you'll feel lighter in some ways and heavier in others? how many of you know you're gonna need a song in your heart? this is that song. (2022-09-20 Saturn)
Live Performances
Footnotes