Going to Queens

I couldn't stop listening to this yesterday, I love Rachel Ware's voice with John Darnielle's throughout the song.

The erotic imagery here is just dominant. "Your hair was dripping wet Your skin was clean" Wet hair, I think, is often used in erotic imagery in poems. I swear there's a great example I've got somewhere, but I just can't pull it out of my memory banks at the moment. Look at the next line though, which is even more clearly erotic. "Your body .. heavy on mine" continues the sensual image.

But, like with a whole lot of Mountain Goats songs, the sad twist (as jfruh pulls out from the comment John Darnielle made) is we cannot trust the narrator when he says "You were all I ever wanted, you were all I'd ever need". The narrator thinks so, maybe so does the object of his desire, but even they aren't sure. Especially clear with the ending "I will know who you are yet".

So far as the opening, I think it's poetic genius, but just lays the scene, provides the sense of background for the story that there actually are kids jumping rope outside heard through a window with the window flowing in.

Here's a quote JD gave before playing this song live:

“This is the song about how when time gets a little rough, you can always fall back on round-the-clock boning. You can just, if things get hard in your relationship, you don’t have to talk if you don’t want to. Man! Maybe you got nothing to say. Just have sex until it gets better. Write me if it doesn’t work after five or six years.”

the female singer is rachel ware, i believe.

Totally surreal realization. The "children skipping rope / tripled thier speed" makes me think of the moment when your heart rate jumps upon a realization or an epiphany. This song isn't so much a message, but rather a painting.

well...it can also be literal. I mean, the children were playing double dutch...so they could just make it even faster.

who's the female vocalist?