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in: All Survivors Pack songs, All Eternals Deck songs, Video, The Jordan Lake Sessions: Volumes 3 and 4 songs

Never Quite Free

Edit
Never Quite Free
All Eternals Deck

Album

All Eternals Deck

Released

2011

Artist

the Mountain Goats

Length

3:30

Previous track

"For Charles Bronson"

Next track

"Liza Forever Minnelli"

Never Quite Free is the 12th song on the album All Eternals Deck. A demo of this song is track 10 on All Survivors Pack. It also appears as the 29th song on the 2021 live album The Jordan Lake Sessions: Volumes 3 and 4.

Lyrics[]

​It's so good to learn
 that right outside your window
There's only friendly fields
 and open roads
And you'll sleep better when you think
 you've stepped back from the brink
And found some peace inside yourself;
 lay down your heavy load

It gets alright
to dream at night
Believe in solid skies
 and slate blue earth below
But when you see him, you'll know

It's okay to find
 the faith to saunter forward
There's no fear of shadows
 spreading where you stand
And you'll breathe easier just knowing
 that the worst is all behind you
And the waves that tossed the raft
 all night have set you on dry land

It gets okay
to praise the day
Believe in sheltering skies
 and stable earth beneath
But hear his breath come
 through his teeth

Walk by faith
Tell no one what you've seen

It's so good to learn
 that from right here
 the view goes on forever
And you'll never want for comfort,
 and you'll never be alone
See the sunset turning red,
 let all be quiet in your head
And look about, 
 all the stars are coming out

They shine like steel swords
Wish me well where I go
But when you see me, you'll know

Comments by John Darnielle About this Song[]

  • "This is a song about the nagging feeling that your demons will pursue you to the grave, um, I mean I don't know that they will, but I can't assure you that they don't." -- 2011-03-30 - Bowery Ballroom - New York, NY
  • "I always feel a little guilty when I demystify this song because people find it kind of upbeat and cheery and, like, comforting. And, like, that's a great honor, and I'm so proud that people can use the song for that purpose. But this song is about having one thing in your life that you can never quite get free from no matter how hard you try. It's called 'Never Quite Free.'" -- 2012-01-31 - Visulite Theatre - Charlotte, NC
  • "I always feel like saying what it's about is cheating people out of a more comforting misinterpretation... What the song is about is what its title says. It's about not being able to ever fully entirely feel loosed from something that bound you, no matter how you see the evidence of your bondage growing old and desiccated underneath you and no longer actually has its grip on you. But there's still the marks where the ropes were." -- 2015-04-11 - City Winery - New York, NY
    • In this show, the line before "walk by faith" was "hear his breath come, whistling oddly, through his teeth" and the last line was "But when you see me changed, you'll know."
  • "It is a song about a sort of cautious optimism." -- 2015-04-16 - Bogart's - Cincinnati, OH
  • "This is a song about, uh, a sort of - you tread lightly around a word like 'liberated,' but - this is a song about, um, wanting to liberate yourself from things that genuinely bind you, and feeling as though the last little bits of those cords will never quite be off your skin. It's called 'Never Quite Free.'" -- 2015-06-03 - The Mayan - Los Angeles, CA
  • "This is a song about the rear-view mirror, which is a weird place to hang out. Uh, because, like, the ones in your car, like, you drive, and then the thing in it gets smaller, and then it's gone. Right? But then there's the other, internal rear-view mirror, where the shapes grow bigger and larger according to their own sort of calculus that you can't really figure out. Um. But you sort of have to have faith that eventually you'll be far enough down the road that the thing that was there constantly for most of the drive will recede and recede and be invisible." -- 2015-06-01 - The Fillmore - San Francisco, CA
  • "This is a song about going through trauma." -- 2016-04-16 - Strand-Capitol Performing Arts Center - York, PA
  • "I feel strongly that having formal strictures, having boundaries within which to play, is where true liberation lies. You can sense that I’m Catholic from this. When you eliminate all of the boundaries and say, “I can do whatever I want”, then you don’t get to do anything interesting because you don’t have a way of breaking any rules. For me, there’s something to having a restriction - which I did on that album. Although it didn’t start that way. I had a few songs, and they all had three-word titles, and I went, “oh, make them all three-word titles. That’ll be fun, three is a sort of mystical number, numerologists like three.” I don’t buy into any of that, but I can buy into it for the sake of writing stuff. So it makes you look for three-word phrases; it makes you have some song titles where your bandmates will tell you to your face, 'you’ve gotta come up with a better title than that John!' I won’t say what it is - it wound up being ‘Never Quite Free’ - but it had some other title about a wolf. It was not good, but I wanted all three of those words in the title and I couldn’t give myself any extra words to flesh it out. I couldn’t throw the whole thing away and I couldn’t fit the original words into the concept I wanted, so I wound up with ‘Never Quite Free’, which is a good song title. These sorts of strictures are how you get to interesting places." -- Norman Records Interview

Things Referenced in this Song[]

  • The line "walk by faith" references 2 Corinthians 5:7.[1]
  • The line "stars…shine like steel swords" references the story of the Sword of Damocles

Live Shows this Song Was Played at[]

Videos of this Song[]


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