“Pure Honey” asks the most unimportant question in the catalog but will keep you guessing just the same.

Track: “Pure Honey”
Album: Philyra (1994) and Protein Source of the Future…Now! (1999)

In November of 2016, John Darnielle played a set for charity in Chicago. It is one of very few instances where you can hear “Pure Honey.” You should check it out.

“Pure Honey” is a stupid song. Songs like “Going to Maine” and “The Monkey Song” are similar songs that sound silly when compared to most of the 500+ song Mountain Goats catalog, but a song is allowed to be stupid or silly. These aren’t insulting terms. John Darnielle describes them the same way. You just have to be honest when you’re singing a song about the dangers of seals or a funny ode to ancient British people.

John Darnielle sometimes mentions his early career and talks about how he didn’t like being “the guy with the funny songs.” He was a poet first, so one can understand the fun of people laughing along with something silly competing with “serious” craft.

The best Mountain Goats experiences have both. “New Chevrolet in Flames” has a bunch of jokes in it, but it’s about two people who shouldn’t be together and delay the end of their experience by lighting a car on fire for fun. There are tons of these songs in the recent past, but the early songs tended to be shorter and had less room to explore their ideas.

Keep all of that in your head as you listen to someone pay $200 for John Darnielle to play “Pure Honey” in 2016. It is a song that entirely exists for a repeated joke and the absurd idea it conjures in your mind. Did this person just want to tie a $200 donation to something that silly or is “Pure Honey” something more to them? Could be either, but I personally don’t think either is any more fitting than the other.