The furious “Baboon” is there for you when you need it, but here’s to hoping you never feel like you need it.

Track: “Baboon”
Album: The Coroner’s Gambit (2000)

On March 1, 1997, John Darnielle played “Baboon” at Replay Lounge in Lawrence, Kansas. That show may have been recorded, but if so, I can’t find it. Later in March he played it at NYU, which you can hear here. The recording is a little muddled and the first verse sounds recorded underwater, but it’s hard to be too mad at a recording of a song three years before release. It’s remarkable that it exists at all. Replay Lounge is still there (as is NYU, if you were wondering) and still open. It’s fun to picture younger John Darnielle belting this song out for a much smaller crowd than he’d play today.

There was a time when a lot of Mountain Goats songs sounded like “Baboon.” These days even the angry songs don’t sound much like this. Maybe it’s because John Darnielle is less interested in writing about angry lovers or maybe it’s because everything is more complex and hidden now, but “Baboon” is unmistakable. This is one person furious at another and they are willing to unload both barrels. You’d never talk to someone you love like this, or you wouldn’t if you still loved them. That’s what “Baboon” is, it’s the moment you don’t love them anymore. “Black Molly” and “Oceanographer’s Choice” feel like cousin songs. These aren’t on the same album, but all three explore the same feeling and the same rage. I think “Baboon” is the best of this group.

John Darnielle put a scan of the original lyrics online here, including the verse he cut with the annotation “no good.” Interestingly, I feel like the lines he cut would feel at home in other songs of the era. “Baboon,” however, just has to show up, explode, and be done.