In April of 2005, the Mountain Goats released The Sunset Tree. Like the album preceding it in the band's discography, The Sunset Tree dealt with themes deeply personal to John Darnielle, the album's writer. This album is widely seen by listeners to be a bastion of hope and survival despite bleak circumstances.

John Darnielle played a solo show in Raleigh, North Carolina in November of 2023, during which he revived a song that he'd been performing as a poem at the time of the album's release. One line that struck me from the song, which had gone unplayed since shortly after the album's release, went as follows: "I am a freshman in high school / I will be dead by this time next year." In the months leading up to the album's release, John Darnielle nearly cut This Year from The Sunset Tree, stopping only at the request of bassist Peter "Peter" Hughes. Instead, the song, and the album it sprouts from, represent life allowed to grow where no thing of consequence can.

This collection of fan covers, then, is a benediction to every person out there living with someone who abuses them and for every person who has been surviving in the wake of abuse past. You are going to make it through this year and twenty more of them too.