“If England Were What England Seems, Then We Would Only Have Our Dreams” is a love song sold because you really, genuinely believe it.

Track: “If England Were What England Seems, Then We Would Only Have Our Dreams”
Album: Unreleased

The earliest version of “If England Were What England Seems, Then We Would Only Have Our Dreams” was played the same day as “Going to Some Damned English City” at a radio station in Evanston, Illinois, that is just a few miles away from where I am sitting right now. Before playing today’s song, John Darnielle says he might mess it up and have to start over. He says this as an interruption, which I think is a very funny little joke. Years later, in 2002, Darnielle played it again at the same radio station and did actually mess it up and start over, twice. I would like to believe in a universe where that’s intentional and all part of some grand plan.

But, seriously, I think this is one of the strongest from the early, unreleased batch. The title is intentionally unwieldy and the lyrics are grand. “In the place where the world stops forever // in the place where your body begins” is, certainly, grand, but also it doesn’t translate outside the space of the song. I’ve talked about this before and struggled to articulate it, but I am forever fascinated by the role emotion plays in these early songs. This narrator is telling you something big, to them, but relatable, to you. They’re doing it in the language of a love song, but also just offset enough that it’s something else. “Something really special,” you might say.