“Cutter” hearkens back to youth, but it’s really a story about where you end up when you can’t help yourself.

Track: “Cutter”
Album: Unreleased

If you go to a Mountain Goats show in Bloomington, Indiana, smart money says you are likely to hear “Cutter.” John Darnielle was born in Bloomington, though he hails from California, and when he goes back he very often plays the only song that I know of that references his birth state. It’s a direct reference, too, and “I was born in Indiana thirty years ago” is about as direct as it comes. That line gets a “woo” invariably from the hometown crowd, but it’s an interesting song beyond that oddity.

It is easy, with a band like this, to speak in hyperbole. The band’s early official merch leaned into obsession with a slogan that became the name of a podcast with “I only listen to the Mountain Goats.” That said, even in that space, “I’m gonna wrap up my troubles in you” is extreme. So many Goats narrators are in dark situations, but this one defines themselves by it. You don’t say something like that unless you’ve, to some degree, come to terms with how things are going and you are dedicated to digging down, not out, of your hole.

The title references self-harm, so we’re obviously in a dark place, but this deserves to be grouped with songs like “Poltergeist” rather than songs from The Sunset Tree. There are brief moments that tell us this was once some other way, but this is beyond saving. There are a lot of Mountain Goats songs like this one, but I don’t know that the band has ever expressed that kind of frustrating inability to help yourself as succinctly as they do here. You cannot help but see this story for what it is.