Multiple threats and multiple problems surround our duo in “Brandy Let’s Go.”

Track: “Brandy Let’s Go”
Album: Unreleased (Released online by John Darnielle in 2008)

As I mentioned with “Hye Kye,” John Darnielle asks that people donate to one of two charities if they download songs from this three-song online release and here is that link. He released this song and two others after the fanbase donated to help a friend of his who was mugged and hurt badly. He’s put out a number of older songs over the years in similar situations, and I’d be remiss if I didn’t drop the link.

“Brandy Let’s Go” is the best of the three, I think, and honestly one of the best of the early, unreleased ones. Guns don’t show up all that often in Mountain Goats songs, generally because the threat of emotional violence looms larger than that of physical violence for many of these characters. Here we get a little bit of both, though the gun itself is less important than, as always, what these two are going through in a much larger sense. One sees fury in the other’s eyes and an otherwise silly moment of tracing constellations in the sky is surrounded by grander commentary on love being gone. I love the delivery of this one as much as I do that common Goats feeling of wondering just what we’ve stumbled in on with these two.