As good as anthem as any Mountain Goats song, “California Song” shows us a frozen moment in time.

Track: “California Song”
Album: Sweden (1995)

The version of “California Song” on Sweden is pretty, but it requires you to look past the era-appropriate digital preset background. Maybe that part is charming to you the way it is on excellent preset songs like “Going to Malibu.” It’s a nice beat behind a sweet song and that is good enough. It should be good enough, at least, but that’s if you haven’t heard it any other way.

For a time, “California Song” was a closer. You can see the best version of that at this show in California in 2008. Peter Hughes plays the bassline and John Darnielle whispers the first verse before eschewing the mic and singing the rest into the crowd as they softly sing it back to him. The entire room knows this song, as he predicts by telling them they all know it. Some of that’s the location and some of that’s the venue and some of that’s the song, but all of it is the recognition that the room is going to know a song that’s this central to the experience.

I don’t think this one “unlocked” for me until I saw that performance. The original is truly beautiful, but there’s something about the passion from the show that brings a line like “as white as household bleach” to life. It all ends up with a reference to another song, which wasn’t uncommon at the time for John Darnielle, but the overall feeling being conveyed is 100% Mountain Goats.