Two people are connected unexpectedly in one of the Mountain Goats’ favorite of their own songs.

Track: “Noctifer Birmingham”
Album: Ghana (1999)

The layers to a song like “Noctifer Birmingham” take years to unfold. In a rare live performance of the song in 1996, John Darnielle introduced it as “pretty goddamned obscure” and then joked that it was “a song about my fucking brother” before laughing and playing it. He didn’t play it again (so far as is generally known) until 2012, and even then he introduced it as “the first tricky song” in the catalog. In the album notes on Ghana he says that it’s the “high-water mark of the years 1992-95” and it’s one of his favorite songs.

You will notice that the guitar is very delicate, it’s one of the songs where the tune plays in the background. In the liner notes, John adds: “In a rare show of restraint, I do not even once attempt here to physically destroy the guitar by playing it as hard as I can.” It’s no “Cubs in Five” then, but it certainly doesn’t need to be. Rachel Ware’s bass and vocals add to a droning, continuous sense of the events of the song. The feel is beautiful, and her absence from the band for so long explains why it doesn’t really get played anymore, even though it’s one of John’s favorites.

It’s a classic style for the Mountain Goats, wherein we get enough of a story to be curious but not enough to really understand what’s going on. One character is shocked by a phone call and comes immediately to see someone else in Alabama. There are katydids in the background and other specifics, but what actually happened isn’t as important as that feeling we all know when we have to take a trip we don’t want to make as a result of some unexpected news.