518. You’re in Maya

Alex Russell Unreleased, , , , , , ,

“You’re in Maya” was the first ever song John Darnielle wrote about himself, but it’s about you, too.

Track: “You’re in Maya”
Album: Unreleased

“You’re in Maya” is, if you’re of a certain mind, “the” Mountain Goats song. It’s unreleased and extremely rare, even among rare songs. It’s autobiographical, from an era where John Darnielle wasn’t writing about himself often. You may still hear someone yell for this at a live show, which I’ll admit I assuredly must have done at some point without knowing any better. But that’s the thing, you can’t yell for “You’re in Maya.” At one live show decades ago, Darnielle’s act of playing it was tied to an ask of if someone would “warm him up” a shot of Old Grand-Dad. It’s a specific thing, not to be taken lightly.

The song speaks for itself, in a way. The chorus is Gaelic, so maybe that sounds crazy, but you will immediately either remember this time in your life or you will recognize it as the right now of your life when you hear it. Every performance is a little bit different, to the point where the last four lines of the second verse get transposed in order half the time, but it always feels the same. This is an era where you play pinball until you don’t want to kill people. This is an era where you wear a coat that was important to your father even if you have complicated feelings about your father. This is where you drink and you hide out in Portland.

At some performances he says the address of the house he was in for the second verse. I went to see it in Portland, many years ago. Being in that physical location could be transformative, but it’s more about the time in your life. You’ll be this person, hopefully briefly, and you don’t need Portland to commune with them again.

4 thoughts on “518. You’re in Maya”

  1. It’s funny that you should say this song is “extremely rare”. I’m not sure exactly how to measure how rare a song that is unreleased anyway, but somehow I always had the exact opposite impression.

    I always thought of this song, along with You Were Cool, as the two most classic of the unreleased songs. The ones that people were most likely to know, the ones people were most likely to love.

    But thinking about it now, I have absolutely no idea *why* I thought that. You certainly seem to be right that the song hasn’t been played that often (I had had the opposite impression–again, no idea why). Possibly just that I liked this song so much, and kept returning to it, that I assumed everyone else who listened to unreleased Mountain Goats songs was doing exactly the same as me. Or possibly that You’re In Maya just sounds so much like a classic Mountain Goats song (as you put it: “the” Mountain Goats song) that I couldn’t imagine it being anything other than widely-loved, often played in the solo set.

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    • You’re not wrong. I think ten years ago this would be a song that only a true maniac would know, but the way rarity works these days has changed. There’s a lot of discussion about it, even from the band themselves, and I generally fall on the side of the fence that thinks that it’s a good thing that nothing is really “rare” anymore. At least not in the way it used to be. Once upon a time I had to import the EPs from the UK and pay crazy shipping fees to hear a cover of “Sometimes I Still Feel the Bruise.” Is it better or worse that you can find that instantly now? It’s better.

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      • Just for fun, I checked my youtube history, and apparently the first time I heard You’re In Maya was one month shy of ten years ago. I guess that puts me just on the wrong (right?) side of being a maniac.

        But yeah, it’s true that I was not doing deep dives into the mountain goats in the pre-youtube era, and I haven’t thought much about what that would be like.

        No larger point here, just that that first time you see You’re in Maya on your recommended videos and click on it, you know right away that it is something special. Seems like we agree on that.

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