The Alpha Couple hopes they can get to tomorrow by meeting some needs and not others in “Alpha Aquae.”

Track: “Alpha Aquae”
Album: Unreleased

Technically “Alpha Aquae” is an Extra Glenns song and it was also played at that famous Munchies show that I have written entirely too much about in 1992. You have a few ways to go when you think about this one, and that’s even before contending with it as an Alpha Couple song. I go back and forth on if the distinction between the Mountain Goats proper and the Extra Glenns is an important one or not, and for the live stuff I lean more and more towards it not truly being that critical to draw distinction. The performance can differ, for sure, but the songwriting typically tends to be so similar that you wouldn’t notice if someone didn’t tell you.

These are our heroes, alright, as they taunt each other and lament that they don’t know (or care, likely) what season it even is through their miserable time together. At this point they’re still sleeping together (though maybe just sleeping together) though they are “cursing each other” and “cursing the weather.” The narrator recalls the title and calls for water, over and over, and it descends into that space all of the Alpha tales descend to, eventually. Much like the Goats/Glenns differences, the Alphas maybe aren’t the same two in these songs but maybe they are. You can see them, either way, can’t you? You can feel that hot bedroom, maybe in Florida or maybe not quite yet, and that hope that a glass of water can stave off what comes next?