Tallahassee is less a song cycle as much as it is more of a collection of songs about two characters who will immediately be familiar with past records from The Mountain Goats. The characters are a couple that first appeared in "Alpha Double Negative: Going to Catalina" on the Mountain Goats first release (Songs for Petronius 7" EP, Shrimper, 1992) and have continued to teeter on the brink of divorce for the better part of a decade over the course of songs titled "Alpha _(fill in any number of words and terms here)_." Tallahassee finds this couple at wit's end, ready to either stay together forever or actually get divorced, and they retreat to Florida in an effort to work all of these details out. Over fourteen songs both characters continue to up the ante on their relationship by starting a small trade in arms trafficking, alternating between loving each other and that special hatred that can only be held for someone you truly care about and just about everything else you would want to experience from a truly dysfunctional relationship. While it might sound like these songs would really only appeal to the band's long-time fans, Darnielle has stealthily crafted Tallahassee into an open-ended and accessible record. Do not be afraid—the characters and situations are well explained in Darnielle's lyrics so that the backstory isn't completely necessary.