A Strangely Comforting Quarantine Album

In March, as the coronavirus was bringing public life to a halt, John Darnielle of the Mountain Goats sat in his North Carolina home and composed music about fifth-century pagans on the verge of being annihilated by ascendant Christendom. One song, describing the furtive worship of old gods, included the phrase “Neck deep in our passions / Serve who we serve.” He sat and thought about the next lines. What rhymes with serve? Swerve was too obvious. Lurve was too British. Curve, maybe?

The line he sang: “Shrouded in moonlight / bucking the curve.”

When I spoke with Darnielle by phone earlier this week, I pointed out that “bucking the curve” sounds awfully similar to a certain public-health imperative of recent importance. The song gives voice to an ancient sect whose sequestration in the kind of resembles interminable quarantine: “The burden of exile / gets easy to bear / sometimes forget / there’s cities down there.” Darnielle initially told me that he wrote the song so early in the coronavirus crisis that jargon about infection curves