Up the Wolves

Up the Wolves
	;
Album	The Sunset Tree
Released	2005
Artist	the Mountain Goats
Length	3:27
Previous Track	Dinu Lipatti's Bones
Next Track	Lion's Teeth

Up the Wolves is the seventh song on the album The Sunset Tree. It also appears as the 34th song on the 2020 live album The Jordan Lake Sessions: Volumes 1 and 2. In 2014, it was featured in the AMC television series The Walking Dead (S4E12, "Still").

Lyrics[]

There's bound to be a ghost at the back of your closet
No matter where you live
There'll always be a few things, maybe several things
That you're gonna find really difficult to forgive

There's gonna come a day when you'll feel better
You'll rise up free and easy on that day
And float from branch to branch, lighter than the air
Just when that day is coming 
Who can say?
Who can say?

Our mother has been absent
Ever since we founded Rome
But there's gonna be a party 
When the wolf comes home

We're gonna commandeer the local airwaves
To tell the neighbors what's been going on
And they will shake their heads
And wag their bony fingers
In all the wrong directions
And by daybreak we'll be gone

I'm gonna get myself in fighting trim
Scope out every angle of unfair advantage
I'm gonna bribe the officials
I'm gonna kill all the judges
It's gonna take you people years
To recover from all of the damage

Our mother has been absent
Ever since we founded Rome
But there's gonna be a party when the wolf comes home

Comments by John Darnielle About this Song[]

"This is a song about how you're going to be alright. It's called 'Up the Wolves'." -- 2005-05-05 - Knitting Factory - New York, NY
"I'm always trying to figure out what to say about this god damn song. Part of me wants to say look it's about revenge, but as soon as I say that... no, that's not quite it. Part of me wants to say it's about the satisfaction of not needing revenge... and I say no, that some new age stuff. I think it's a song about the moment in your quest for revenge when you learn to embrace the futility of it. The moment when you know that the thing you want is ridiculous and pompous and a terrible thing to want anyway. The direction in which you're headed is not the direction in which you want to go, yet you're going to head that way a while longer anyway cause that's just the kind of person you are." -- 2007-10-01 - Bowery Ballroom - New York, NY
"This was a song that, for me, in the writing of The Sunset Tree, which was a really intense experience for me, 'cause I sorta didn't know it was coming, it was like, y'know, normally I tell some stories and then, um. ... I may [?] say this to people sometimes, I usually don't say it onstage –– if you are one of the people who likes The Sunset Tree because you, like me, lived in an abusive household, a thing happens when your abuser dies that's like an egg breaking open and all of the good stuff coming out, right? And you're not -- and you shouldn't –– well, not you shouldn't –– you don't want to say 'oh, I'm so glad that guy died,' so ... because you're not, because it's a complex situation. But at the same time, there is a freedom that comes for you, it comes stealing up on you like a great shadow and a really warm and enveloping shadow that's a great place. And, uh, about a year and a half after my stepfather died, I wrote this, I sent it to Peter, who was going through some hard times, and he wrote back and said, 'I really like this song.' It's called Up the Wolves.'" –– 2013-06-22 - The Bottletree - Birmingham, AL
"This is a song, when people talk about triumph over adversity, adversity sounds like sort of a faceless sort of a thing that you don't need to triumph over so much as get around. This is a song about triumph over the adversary." -- 2013-07-26 - Newport Folk Festival - Newport, RI

Things Referenced in this Song[]

The chorus alludes to the myth of Romulus and Remus, twins who were abandoned to die (albeit unwillingly) by their mother and nursed by a she-wolf (and the former of whom would later found Rome).
The title may also be a reference to the common punk rock phrase "Up The Punx."