John Darnielle doesn’t write songs like “The Hot Garden Stomp” these days, but you can visit his most troubled characters in 1993.

Track: “The Hot Garden Stomp”
Album: Hot Garden Stomp (1993)

Some of the early Mountain Goats songs feature the same type of narrator. It may not be the same character, but it’s at the very least the same type of character: a sad person who is convinced that the right person could save their life with no effort put in on their part. It’s a reductive way to view another person, but it’s also a fairly common line of thinking among young people who haven’t realized the world doesn’t exist to serve their whims.

John Darnielle says that those type of narrators aren’t interesting to him anymore, but “those songs are not without their occasional charms.” There are scattered songs in the early part of the catalog that fit into this category and most of them don’t see the light of day now. “The Hot Garden Stomp” is a foot-stomper and works even now as long as you can separate the artist from the character.

Darnielle says these days of his main character that he’s “not impressed by his suffering” and there is no better summation of that angst than “I hear you talking // shut up.” These days Mountain Goats characters are more complex, but in 1993 it was enough to be furious and sweat in a hot room.

Live versions work better than the studio version in this case. The trip back to 1993 with the tape crackles is interesting, but the howl over “then you came along with your questions, always questions” on live versions sells this old gem. It’s also worth tracking down this recording from Bloomington, IN in 2011 where Darnielle discusses the gender neutrality of all of his characters and why he doesn’t like writing about people with worldviews like this anymore.