In “Naming Day,” a character locks themselves in their house and sets an impossible goal.

Track: “Naming Day”
Album: Get Lonely (2006)

It’s fairly common for people to be drawn to a kind of elitism about rare songs. “You’re in Maya” is a sort of holy text within them, as it was the kind of song John Darnielle would only play when he felt like he could do it justice and it’s clearly deeply personal. As he’s aged and as the material has grown more personal overall, that list has expanded beyond just that one song.

This mostly describes the live-only songs, but the bonus tracks deserve the same considerations. “Naming Day” is one of the three bonus tracks on the Japanese version of Get Lonely. John Darnielle used to joke that he put the best stuff on alternate versions of albums because he couldn’t resist making it harder to find. That’s certainly been true in the past, but “Naming Day” is a strange song amongst the rest of the album, so it seems most likely that it got left off for more straightforward reasons.

The narrator locks themselves in their home and turns friends away when they come try to help. The idea of home as a prison comes up quite a lot in Mountain Goats songs, so it’s not surprising that Get Lonely has a few others. “Naming Day” extends the idea and calls anyone who would come to visit “automatically a suspect.”

John Darnielle sings a little higher than normal on “Naming Day” and it makes the narrator seem nervous. The chorus references Rumpelstiltskin as the character says they need to stay locked up until they can spin straw into gold. There’s also a very curious reference to the Mormon church. The whole thing combines to describe a scared, lonely person, but one that’s a little harder to understand than the others on Get Lonely.