“Alabama Nova” isn’t the live show staple that it used to be, but it’s still one of the catchiest songs from the early catalog.

Track: “Alabama Nova”
Album: Nothing for Juice (1996)

“We used to play this one every night!” – John Darnielle, 10-18-2004 at The Earl in Atlanta

Mountain Goats fans tape everything, much like Grateful Dead fans before them. I can’t speak for Deadheads, but it seems like Goats fans do it just as much to catch moments like this one as they do to catch good renditions of each song. If you listen to the recording in 2004, you’ll hear a fan yell for “Alabama Nova” and then Darnielle sound shocked as he delivers the above line. He sounds just as surprised that he’s playing it now as he is with the fact that he ever stopped.

Nothing for Juice is an excellent album. It’s also an album with Rachel Ware, though, so a lot of it doesn’t make the rotation these days. After the song in Atlanta Darnielle says that the last time he played it was nearly a decade ago in Germany. “Singin’ a song about Alabama to the Germans!” He sounds wistful, in a way, and it’s cool to hear the reverence that he has for his own old stuff.

The song itself is a stripped down, sub-two-minutes discussion between two characters. It’s difficult to dissect because it’s so sparse. In many ways it feels like just a simple song where the guitar and the bass play off each other well and the harmony really works. It’s not going to bring the house down and it doesn’t have any lines you’re going to tattoo into your soul, but it’s catchy enough that a non-Goats fan can enjoy the bass and a Goats fan can speculate about deeper problems this couple isn’t talking about as they talk on that front porch.