Sentries in the Ambush / Divided Sky Lane

When the bonus 7" was made available online, on July 7, 2019, John Darnielle wrote some words about the songs, which were shared on Bandcamp, Facebook, and Instagram:

The bonus 7" for In League with Dragons consisted of two songs that were surely going to get orphaned, since I almost never bring along anything from a previous year’s work into the next one. I liked them too well to just let them shuffle off into oblivion, so here they are. “Divided Sky Lane” was written and recorded in the back lounge of a bus parked at Merriweather Post Pavilion during the tour where we opened for Jason Isbell – I think it might have been the first night of the tour. “Sentries in the Ambush” is one of the songs from the Riversend song cycle that eventually turns into In League With Dragons – this one’s pretty explicitly sword-and-sorcery and is about a high-casualties land-based attack on the usually peaceful Riversend community. The song after it in the sequence was going to be called “Seaside Wolves” and involved the summoning of mystical warriors from either underneath the sea or in caves by it, but before the matter could get settled I had started thinking about Doc Gooden again, which resulted in an entirely different song, which is not our subject here. Enjoy!