“The Car Song” is simply named but includes a much wider world than the dread that exists inside the vehicle.

Track: “The Car Song”
Album: Unreleased

Over a career, what is “The Car Song?” I find myself thinking about things like that when considering these sub-two-minute songs from the super-early days. Does John Darnielle ever think about this one? Could he play this today during the solo set in the middle of a live show? I invariably go to his comments about another such song, “Going to Bridlington,” which we’ve discussed at length but boil down to some wistful memories for this era but largely a move to more complete stuff. It’s not a dismissal of the past but it is an insistence that it be compartmentalized and not thought of as empirically better for having gone by.

There are a few mentions on the old wiki of performances in the 90s and I am sure there are others, but this is mostly a curiosity. It’s a love song, in the way a Mountain Goats song can be, and it’s a little bit sweeter than most of the others. I’m partial to the backing vocals from the Bright Mountain Choir. If anything, despite the fire, this one maybe only tilts at dread rather than insisting upon it, which might be why it never made an actual release. That’s rare, for this era. It may also be a reflection of that which surrounds it that a reference to a “wall of flames” feels like a suggestion rather than a demand.