John Darnielle tells us as much as he can in “Sign of the Crow 2,” but part of this story is lost to history.

Track: “Sign of the Crow 2”
Album: Unreleased (but released on the forums by John Darnielle in 2015)

I live in Chicago and in recent years, John Darnielle has done multi-night stays here on most tours. Most of the time I try to go to all of them, but in 2018 I missed the third night of the tour where John Darnielle played “Sign of the Crow 2.” You can hear it here, and you should, and hear some charming line-flubbing that is a staple of any performance of these unreleased, weird songs. This one is notably harder than most of them, with lines like “stripped and scorched and skinned” and similar structure to verses that leads to forgetting your place. In the recording you can hear what sounds like “good job babe” from the person next to the recording, as someone helps John Darnielle with the missing lyric. I’m eternally fascinated by this when it happens at shows and I’m a sucker for it.

Even the official version of “Sign of the Crow 2” has one of these towards the end, which John Darnielle commented on when he released the song himself as an apology for some late pre-releases of Heretic Pride. The demo is good, but live performances are great. It really takes off when he amps up the final verse, nearly screaming it and speeding it up. I encourage you to seek some of those out. The story itself is interesting enough and you can likely piece it together from the lyrics alone, but the performance is really what makes it for me. I am fond of the chorus, however, and I love the idea of getting just a part of the story and knowing that the rest is unattainable.