Unreleased

582. Alpha Aquae

Alex Russell Unreleased , , , , , , ,

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?

581. Hello Sarah

Alex Russell Unreleased , , , , , , ,

The Sarah in “Hello Sarah” is the original Sarah, but our narrator is somebody very much removed from that world.

Track: “Hello Sarah”
Album: Unreleased

There are people who must have heard “Hello Sarah” back in the 1990s. It was never officially released, though someone archived this comment from John Darnielle on the band’s forums in 2009 where he said that he thought it was taped but was definitely recorded on a radio session. My guess is it was played a few times (or more than a few times) in the early days but then unearthed a few times for more modern solo sets as songs like this tend to come back. The two “modern” performances that are documented are one in 2018, where it was the only unreleased song played that night, and this recorded one from DC in 2009. There are, certainly, others, but this is what we have.

On those same forums, Darnielle called this song a “fever-dream of a guy who… imagines himself as Abraham reborn.” Without that comment, would your mind go to Abraham’s wife when trying to guess who the titular Sarah was? Maybe, or maybe it should, but I know mine wouldn’t. Sarah and Abraham gave birth to a child despite her advanced age, which is a literal miracle in the narrative of the Bible. Sarah was heard to laugh at the idea that it would happen, which is what I think we’re meant to recall in the final verse here. Maybe that’s reaching, but at the very least through these (relatively) ancient forum posts, we can picture what our narrator here is picturing. 

580. Down to the Ark

Alex Russell Unreleased , , , , , , ,

“Down to the Ark” reimagines the 2008 American election as having even grander consequences.

Track: “Down to the Ark”
Album: Unreleased (recorded for Weekend America, a public radio show for American Public Media)

“That’s just not sort of what I do.” – John Darnielle, on writing political satire without being partisan.

“Down to the Ark” exists solely as a one-off recording for Weekend America, a now-defunct radio show from Minnesota. You can still read the comments on the original post here, and the fact that so much of this still exists on the web for a radio program that hasn’t aired in almost fifteen years is both remarkable and a testament to public radio in some sort of way. The song was written for “Super Tuesday,” the day in American elections where, typically, the primary candidates for political parties are decided given the number of states that vote on that same day. It certainly felt like the end of days for American politics in 2008, which, in turn, feels quaint now as I write this in 2023. I’m sure if you’re reading this later than that, you’ll laugh at even what we thought was the end of days in 2023. I hope that’s not true, but, well, you’d know better than me, right?

The “sticker for our shirts” is the “I Voted!” sticker you’ll get if you vote in an American election, because we need a treat to entice us to vote. In Darnielle’s tale, we’re voting for literal monsters and thus have “just one way to go.” John Darnielle has talked before about people reading too much into some non-political songs but in the years since 2008 he’s had a whole new generation of fascists to write about. There’s a lot to unpack about any political song — Darnielle is a staunch liberal, so the “just one way to go” only works if these are actual monsters — but especially so for one frozen in 2008.

579. Rockin’ Rockin’ Pet Store

Alex Russell Unreleased , , , , , , ,

John Darnielle was happy to leave “Rockin’ Rockin’ Pet Store” as a joke on the sidelines, but it’s worth your time.

Track: “Rockin’ Rockin’ Pet Store”
Album: Unreleased

Nineteen years ago this week, John Darnielle last played (as far as we know) “Rockin’ Rockin’ Pet Store” in Michigan. He opened an ask to the crowd about what he should play and the answers were, honestly, as someone who has heard hundreds of live recordings, surprising. One person asks for “Death Metal Band” and Darnielle says “we’ll get to that” (which he wouldn’t, interestingly, especially for the time) and another guy asks for “Store” many times in a row and is denied and unacknowledged. Let me just say again that “Store” is one of the best few dozen Mountain Goats songs but Darnielle has said he hates the yelling it requires, thus, again, we are denied.

But we do get this outta nowhere song that was old then and it’s two decades later now. You can read the whole story on the wiki about why it’s called that and how a moment with Franklin Bruno led to it. That may close the book on this one for you. For me, it’s always that early version with some form of the Bright Mountain Choir. They barely sing, compared to some of the other ones, but that younger version of Darnielle really hammered this one that one time.

578. Tulsa Imperative

Alex Russell Unreleased , , , , , , ,

Does it matter if the sky literally comes down upon you, with the right person, in “Tulsa Imperative?”

Track: “Tulsa Imperative”
Album: Unreleased

How many of these are there, I wonder? The story goes that John Darnielle couldn’t get a take of “Tulsa Imperative” that he liked and thus it got put in the bin. I am repeating a story I can’t verify there, but it does seem reasonable based on Peter Hughes releasing his version as part of his band Diskothi-Q which you can hear here that, honestly, sounds a lot like the version that we have today. It may seem weird to say this, but Peter Hughes has to be the biggest John Darnielle fan out there. He saved an unknowable amount of projects from the mercurial tendencies of the frontman and obviously is an indispensable Goat even beyond his “fandom.”

“Tulsa Imperative” seems to describe a UFO but, in typical early Darnielle style, it uses a spectacular event as lead-in for a person saying that even that magnificent moment pales in comparison to what we have right here, right now. My read may be way off, but I see this as another one in that long list of love songs about someone who should, probably, be taken by something else, but they are just so in love with the heat and the moment and it’s you, of course, it was always going to be you.

577. Brandy Let’s Go

Alex Russell Unreleased , , , , , , ,

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.

576. Birthday Song: This Time Has Gone

Alex Russell Unreleased , , , , , , ,

The unofficially titled “Birthday Song: This Time Has Gone” is another snapshot that reveals a lot of what we don’t see.

Track: “Birthday Song: This Time Has Gone”
Album: Unreleased

There’s no real title for “Birthday Song: This Time Has Gone,” which I did not realize and hadn’t really thought about. I’ve talked before in this series about a phenomenon that’s related to the unreleased songs in that a lot of them don’t really have any “secondary texts.” Phenomenon might be too strong a word, but I started this series because I couldn’t find anyone who had ever written one word about one of my favorite Mountain Goats songs and I wanted to talk about what I thought it meant because it seemed very much in doubt. You do not need to do that with this one.

The narrator of “Birthday Song: This Time Has Gone,” or whatever you decide to call it in your head, goes downstairs and eats cake. We get a few details about this person that fit in with other narrators in the world of the Goats, most notably that they have to check their ID to know which birthday this is, and mostly we’re in familiar territory. Maybe your backstory differs from mine, but it’s hard to argue with the forced nature of the narrator saying they thought about them “a little.” It seems unlikely and it definitely is related to the idea that this relationship once was so strong it consumed from within. We’re in and out of this song, but there’s enough here for two whole lives.

575. Song for Greg Valentine

Alex Russell Unreleased , , , , , , ,

The simple power of violence is all you need in “Song for Greg Valentine.”

Track: “Song for Greg Valentine”
Album: Unreleased

The discussion of if wrestling is real or not misses the point. This is central to all the Mountain Goats songs about wrestling, but it also really assumes you’re way past that point. I watched a lot of wrestling when I was younger and I don’t watch any now, but I feel like I still understand and appreciate what people are getting out of it. That said, it is an insular world. Justin McElroy, the podcaster, once said something that still sticks with me: “I often find when I don’t know who a celebrity is, it turns out they’re a wrestler.” It’s funny for several reasons but it’s also a reminder that this world is huge even without you knowing anything about it.

The real Greg Valentine that gives the title to “Song for Greg Valentine” was indeed a legendary wrestler. One of his gimmicks was to “break legs,” which explains the song’s driving message. “Break legs,” John Darnielle echoes over and over, giving the crowd that heard it the one time (maybe, likely, probably) it was ever played one more anthem of resistance. This one’s great and the only performance of it includes a full explanation of the man himself and the gimmick the song is about, but I invite you to also read the extremely (inordinately, maybe?) long wiki on Greg Valentine. He was a fascinating man, but you learn almost as much about the legacy of wrestling and fandom in that someone shortens Junkyard Dog to “JYD” here and in this space, well, that’s just fine.

574. Poltergeist

Alex Russell Unreleased , , , , , , ,

There’s a notable difference between most Mountain Goats characters and the ones in “Poltergeist,” and it’s a third character.

Track: “Poltergeist”
Album: Unreleased

Very few Mountain Goats narrators are permitted to have children. One of the most famous Goats songs carries the title “No Children” without using those words seemingly as a joke about this very fact and the reasoning behind it. As dark as it ever gets for the two people who are usually the Alpha Couple in a Goats song, it’s more or less contained to just those two. Everyone else gets plenty of warning to leave and typically does.

In “Poltergeist” there is a child. “I can’t stand it when he smiles up at you just because you’re his mother” is as cruel a sentiment as exists. There’s violence all through this one and even though we hope it’s just emotional violence, whew, what a hope, when that’s the best shot you have.

I’d put the snarl John Darnielle delivers “Poltergeist” with up against “Baboon” and the other truly bitter ones. It’s so grim and so rough, but it’s also slanted because you remember these people have responsibilities outside of themselves. We only ever get the narrator’s perspective but here we have an inarguable truth beyond even the typical occlusion of the other side that these two are in the absolute bleakest spot imaginable.

573. Pinklon

Alex Russell Unreleased , , , , , , ,

“Pinklon” tells a not-real story about a real larger-than-life figure and finds a celebration in redemption.

Track: “Pinklon”
Album: Unreleased

I used to deliver pizza and, as you might expect, it meant many hours of the day I was stuck in a car going back and forth over the same few miles of road. I filled those hours with books on tape, mostly, but I also started listening to one full Mountain Goats live show every day. I burned them on CD-R and scrawled things like “TMG 11-7-99” on them. That was 100% of the context I gave myself and I guess I figured at some point I’d finish all of them. If you start today it’ll take you years to do that. There’s no such thing as “all of them,” either, but I made it through hundreds.

That process means I have a lot of half-remembered stage banter in my head. Some of it I’ve been able to find elsewhere but some of it was not notable enough to make it to a wiki or other aggregated site. This includes an explanation somewhere of “Pinklon,” a story about real-life boxer Pinklon Thomas returning from jail. The song imagines this as an overblown, triumphant moment. The real Pinklon maybe went to jail as a youth and maybe didn’t. The song is fantastic, certainly one of the best non-released tracks, and the story’s truth isn’t really all that important in the wake of the feeling you get as John Darnielle bellows out the legend.