“This one is about the point where you love someone a lot and it’s not dead yet. You know it’s not dead yet because sometimes you fall asleep about an hour later than you want to because it racks the interior of your sternum, as we call it in the medical business. But every time you’re together, it really feels like somebody’s gotta die. And y'all think I’m crazy but, in the backs of your minds, you know what I’m talking about.”
— John Darnielle introducing West Country Dream, Cow Haus on 1998-02-06
“This is a song about letting the positive energy flow. This is a song about letting the rich, positive, loving energy between two people flow… right down the drain. And watching it go. And watching the scum rush in after it and saying, ‘Hey, what do you know? There it went. We scrubbed it clean. I’ll be damned. So will you.’”
— John Darnielle introducing No Children, Grand Park on 2011-08-05
“This is a song about how you remember your times that you spent in the thrall of the evil that lives inside of you. We identify these evils as external evils because it’s a lot easier than suggesting that your dark times actually are a function of some… thing that’s always in there, like the Blob. It’s like, no matter how hard you freeze it, you know, it somehow thaws and comes out and ruins you for season after season. But it’s never permanent; it feels like it’s going to be permanent, but it’s not permanent. But it feels like it is. And you get away from it and you remember, ‘Oh, that was- that was a dark demon running my house at that time.’”
— John Darnielle introducing In Memory of Satan, The Wexner Center on 2015-04-22