“In the Nightgown of the sullen moon / How the windows lean into the room.”

They’ll Need a Crane EP, track 4: Nightgown of the Sullen Moon. (Listen on iTunes)

I was at a used bookstore one day, doing some nostalgia shopping in the kids’ books section, and I found a copy of the children’s book this song was titled after. As the story goes, one of the John’s saw a drawing by a child with the title “Nightgown of the Sullen Moon” on it, and he thought it was such a great, creative title that they decided to use it for a song. They didn’t realize until much later that the child got the title from a children’s book (I think this was explained in the liner notes for “Then: The Early Years”).

I never understood how the title fit with the song, which is ostensibly about that weird moment of timelessness and disorientation when you take a really serious fall and things get a bit surreal (“Drug trip / it’s not a drug trip / so you feel a bit insulted”). The same thing happened to me once when I was a little kid – fell off some playground equipment and knocked myself unconscious. I recognized the dreamlike sense of gravity from the song instantly, and the intense focus on random details.

Anyway, the book was good. I was very excited to find a copy of it, and doubly so to find that it had great art by David McPhail, who’s always been one of my favorite illustrators. It’s very much out of print, so good luck finding a copy!