“Running Away with What Freud Said” is the first song on the first album and sets up much of what came next.

Track: “Running Away with What Freud Said”
Album: Taboo VI: The Homecoming (1992)

There are four live versions of “Running Away with What Freud Said” online in the Internet Archive. All four are in San Francisco and all four are excellent. If you’ve never spent much time with live Mountain Goats shows, start with shows in California. John Darnielle’s always at his best in California.

I tell you that because you may not want to dive straight into Taboo VI: The Homecoming. “Running Away with What Freud Said” is the first song on the first album and it definitely sounds like it. The recording is rough, with some washed out noises and odd samples mixed in during awkward times. It’s the kind of album you can only love once you love all of the other ones. John Darnielle has consistently said that the first album isn’t great, but it’s a fascinating piece of the band’s history.

You should check out those live versions to get a real appreciation of this song. The album version is pretty catchy, but Darnielle’s voice isn’t yet the force that it became as he developed. Live, he screams something more into the character’s seeming madness and really elevates it.

“Going to Alaska” is the standout, but “Running Away with What Freud Said” works. The narrator wanders around Portland and recovers from a blackout. John Darnielle says the song is about a time he lost several days in his Portland apartment and the time that immediately followed. It’s fitting that his whole career opens with a person, in Portland, who isn’t quite themselves. You’ve got all the pieces there to construct hundreds of songs that followed.