A sweet, complex love song, “Feed This End” stands out among the early tracks of the Mountain Goats.

Track: “Feed This End”
Album: Hot Garden Stomp (1993)

Every now and again, John Darnielle talks about the times that he thought the Mountain Goats were coming to an end. He references those times to talk about when the band was a hobby and nowhere near a profession. It’s weird to talk about fame or success in a world that’s so bifurcated, but the Mountain Goats of today are unquestionably, wildly successful compared to their earlier versions. The band now is a four-piece, at least the touring version is, and they play rooms much larger than The Duke Coffeehouse where you would have found John Darnielle in 1997. At that show, John Darnielle thanked “Johnny Nall,” known to most fans as Jon Nall, arguably the most “famous” Mountain Goats fan who set up a quasi-official website and transcribed so much of what we have to go on from the early days. It was a different time, is what I’m getting at.

The recording from that night in the coffee shop includes one of the only recordings of “Feed This End” you can find easily online. John Darnielle introduces the song as “a very old love song,” which makes it now a very, very old love song. The recording on Hot Garden Stomp is a little difficult to listen to, as is that live version. This is just the cost of reaching back three decades to listen to where it all began. The sound quality may suffer, but the message absolutely does not. A lot of the early songs can feel slight compared to the recent output, but this one is undeniably sweet. I encourage you to push through and to sit with it until it gets inside your bones.