Maybe you are just like John Darnielle: In the depths of the pandemic winter at the end of 2020, the Mountain Goats frontman passed the time trapped at home in North Carolina watching pulpy action movies, finding comfort in familiar tropes and sofabound escapism. But you are not really like John Darnielle, unless the action movies you found comfort in included French thrillers like 2008's Mesrine, vintage Italian poliziotteschi, or the 1974 Donald Pleasence mad-scientist vehicle The Freakmaker. Or unless watching them brought you back to your formative days as an artist, when watching films fueled and soundtracked your songwriting jags and bare-bones home recordings and in turn inspired your 20th album to be a song cycle about the allure-and futility-of vengeance. But there's no shame in not being like John Darnielle; few people are.

"That's what catharsis is," he says. "When you are able to experience something that is frightening to you but you don't have to be harmed by it-that experience is really valuable. I think we're reflecting on the nature of what we consume and of what it says about us."