Inside John Darnielle’s Boiling Brain

Pitchfork: The audience at your show last night included people who have likely been listening to you since the ’90s along with a lot of younger fans, too. Do you clock how the crowds have changed over the years?

John Darnielle: There’s a James Taylor song called “That’s Why I’m Here.” Do you know this song? There’s a lot of received wisdom about James Taylor, but he’s actually kind of a badass. “That’s Why I’m Here” is about acclimating to your role as a person with an extant audience, which is not a relatable topic generally. But James Taylor is so human that he can really do it. In the last verse, he’s talking about his audience:

Some are like summer
Coming back every year
Got your baby, got your blanket, got your bucket of beer
I break into a grin from ear to ear
And suddenly it’s perfectly clear
That’s why I’m here

This is true with us—and it’s not true with every band. People say all the time, “I saw several guys at the show who were in their 60s and a lot of young people.” It’s a huge blessing. Our audience is growing in unpredictable ways.

Young men especially think serial killers are intense. We use the term “edgelord” now, but many young men have always been drawn to this, and I was certainly one of them. If you knew the details about John Wayne Gacy, you had a certain currency among the friend group. “Going to Georgia” has that, and we have enough of those stories out there: the guy whose suffering is so intense he harms himself or somebody else. I don’t need that story in the world anymore.

By not being beholden to your own canon, you’ve allowed yourself to write different defining songs for different generations of fans. In that sense, I would categorize you as a nostalgia-averse artist.

I appreciate that. Although it’s funny. People used the term “nostalgia” a lot when they were reviewing [2017’s] Goths. I bristled at the time, but it’s true. It wasn’t a nostalgic record, but it was engaging questions of nostalgia, or opening the door to nostalgia.

“Opening the door” is a good way to put it, because now you have an entire record that returns to Jenny, a recurring character from one of your most beloved albums.

What happened was, I wrote a new song about Jenny and said, “Well, either this song is going in the garbage or you’re making a whole album out of it.” And I liked the song. This is the great rule in life: Half measures are generally useless. In Revelations, the Lord says, “If you are neither hot nor cold, I shall spew you forth from my mouth.” You have to commit.