That title might refer to arcane slang for a paddy wagon, or it might be the Beasts Pirates in , but Meloy is writing his own canon here. Death is a walking shadow, never glimpsed by the living but known by its heavy footfalls in the hallway. "Turn out your lantern light, set your affairs to right," Meloy sings over a strummed acoustic guitar and a lone funereal horn. "The Black Maria comes for us all."
The angriest song here, "America Made Me," might be twice as powerful if it was half as clever, but there is something to be said for soundtracking dissent with jaunty piano and party horns. It's a tack they've been deploying since "16 Military Wives," although here the sentiment is more potent in its outrage and disgust.
As It Ever Was, So It Will Be Again ends as you might expect: with a nearly 20-minute epic called "Joan in the Garden." Its winding length and multi-part structure gesture toward and its spawn The Hazards of Love, but it might align more closely with "I Was Meant for the Stage,"
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