Unreleased

572. Ethiopians

Alex Russell Unreleased , , , , , , ,

The jaunty “Ethiopians” was cut from an album but tells a story we hear all over it just the same.

Track: “Ethiopians”
Album: Unreleased

During an introduction to “Ethiopians” John Darnielle says it was one of three songs recorded for Tallahassee that didn’t make the album. One of the others is the brutal “Alpha Chum Gatherer,” and like that one this one finds the Alpha Couple married and terrorizing each other.

I have mentioned this a whole bunch in this series but a song like “Ethiopians” really challenges the demand John Darnielle has made that no one ever insist anything cut from an album belongs there. I suppose I’ll grant that “Ethiopians” is at worst duplicative, as there’s nothing here you don’t already know about this duo. Even still, it’s an incredible track and the better of the two. You know you’re in a bad place when you want to “rub their noses in the ugly fact that we are still alive.” The Alpha Couple certainly goes to darker places than this by the end, but this is another story about how it feels to be in the bad times but not have enough power or self-respect to actually fully, really recognize that or demand to leave.

571. Bride

Alex Russell Unreleased , , , , , , ,

Frankenstein and the bride of Frankenstein come to an end in “Bride.”

Track: “Bride”
Album: Unreleased

The bride in the title of “Bride” is the bride of Frankenstein. The song tells the story of the creature deciding on their fate. You can hear what happens. The narrative isn’t really the key here.

Maybe it’s because we have so many other versions of Frankenstein to go off, but this is an easy one to picture and it’s easy to put yourself into the headspace. John Darnielle imbues his narrator with a sadness that goes beyond even the obvious nature of repeating “we belong dead.” I love the delivery here and you can feel how much he likes this one. “Bride” has always felt a little more complete than some of the other songs he’s released online and I think it’s in that delivery rather than the craft. It’s a good song either way, but it’ll stick in your mind because of those labored sighs and what they say about the life this creature had and what comes next.

570. 02-75

Alex Russell Unreleased , , , , , , ,

“02-75” is the address of one lover in a love song that’s only unique for the Mountain Goats if you think it’s all about one guy.

Track: “02-75”
Album: Unreleased

Marc Maron has mentioned many times on his podcast WTF with Marc Maron that one of the lightbulb moments for him as a fan of music was that people are not writing about themselves all the time. It’s one of those things that sounds stupid to say but is still a switch you need flicked in your brain at some point. When I started writing this series I gendered Mountain Goats narrators without thinking about it. He is John Darnielle, ergo these must be either him or similar men. It’s a pretty simplistic view of narrative, but it’s an easy hole to fall in.

That’s what would ordinarily make “02-75” sound like a strange song for John Darnielle to write. It’s an honest, straight-ahead love song. It’s beautiful and has that Darniellian turn of phrase with “real rain, real power” but it is very specifically a love song. It’s not a love song about obsession or masking a secret resentment. It’s a love song he wrote for the woman he would go on to marry and start a family with and that’s just that. It only sounds weird in comparison if you imagine all these people to be the same one. This one is John Darnielle. Those others aren’t.

569. You Were Cool

Alex Russell Unreleased , , , , , , ,

You probably needed to hear “You Were Cool” at some point in your life and it’s here for the memory of who you were.

Track: “You Were Cool”
Album: Unreleased

If you’ve been to a live show in the last ten years or so the odds are good you’ve heard “You Were Cool.” It may be the most “famous” live-only song the band has these days, surpassing the early mystique of “You’re in Maya” or other now-very-weird jams. It’s one of the most written about Mountain Goats songs and absolutely a fan favorite.

All that said, even still, it speaks for itself. It’s hard, I think, to argue with the message and it’s harder still to miss it. This is a sister song to “Amy AKA Spent Gladiator 1” and a dozen other Goats songs about surviving the difficulty of being different at a young age and emerging, if not stronger for the experience, at least alive. It’s a particularly strong message that will hit you differently depending on your age and your circumstances. It’s powerful to read the comments on this one no matter the version you find. Go to a show and hear it, too, but especially take it to heart. Look for an ally and just stay alive.

568. The Car Song

Alex Russell Unreleased , , , , , , ,

“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.

567. Standard Bitter Love Song #5

Alex Russell Unreleased , , , , , , ,

“Standard Bitter Love Song #5” isn’t really that bitter, but there’s a longing you feel just the same.

Track: “Standard Bitter Love Song #5”
Album: Unreleased

Someone in the room at Munchies in Pomona, California on July 22nd in 1992 recorded this show and that is the sole reason you can hear “Standard Bitter Love Song #5” today. It was a Wednesday. Selena Gomez was born and Pablo Escobar went on the run for the final time that same day. Munchies, which was a small restaurant with a stage in the back room, is gone now and the former site is vacant as of this writing.

If you were there then you’d have heard the Bright Mountain Choir perform with John Darnielle and you’d have heard two of the bitter love songs. There are six, as far as people can reliably say, and no one has ever found #2 or #3. Does that mean they don’t exist or that there aren’t recordings of them? I think it’s equally likely that John Darnielle thought it was funny to create mystery with the naming convention as it is that they just were played at early shows people didn’t tape.

“Standard Bitter Love Song #5” is notably less bitter than most of the others. It’s all in the performance and the harmonies, but I have to think this one stands out because of that one-time element. I know I talk about things like this a lot here, but for a band so focused on physical space and what it means it is an unintended gift that we have these moments where we imagine what it must have been like on that one day in that one place.

566. Song for Sasha Banks

Alex Russell Unreleased , , , , , , ,

“Song for Sasha Banks” exists solely because of Twitter, which might be the best thing you can say for Twitter.

Track: “Song for Sasha Banks”
Album: Released on Bandcamp in 2018

At the time of this writing I guess it’s not called Twitter anymore, but, whatever, it probably will be by the end of the month, and that’s a terrible preface for the fact that Sasha Banks, the wrestler, tweeted “Song for Sasha Banks” into existence in 2015 when she asked John Darnielle directly where the song was for her on Beat the Champ. He told her he’d do it before the end of the tour. He did it a few years later and told her, indirectly on the Bandcamp release, “your walk is just beginning and the day will come when all your setbacks look like steps on a ladder.”

You really have your pick with “Song for Sasha Banks.” If you want, there’s just the story of the creation, wherein someone typed three words into their phone and caused John Darnielle to read up on the story of Sasha Banks and write this song. Also, if you want, there’s the art itself, which is a really solid song that would absolutely be at home on Beat the Champ, if a little modern compared to many of the rest of the tales. Also, on a third hand, if you want, there’s the hope tucked into that final verse that paints a much more positive picture than much of the rest of the album where “everyone I love is gonna have their own safe place.” What a thing to exist at all and what a story it both tells and suggests, beyond the text itself.

565. Song for Black Sabbath’s Second North American Tour

Alex Russell Unreleased , , , , , , ,

We see both potential and reality in “Song for Black Sabbath’s Second North American Tour”.

Track: “Song for Black Sabbath’s Second North American Tour”
Album: Unreleased

John Darnielle has said he wrote “Song for Black Sabbath’s Second North American Tour” in tribute to the idea that Ozzy Osbourne worked in a slaughterhouse and seemed to be headed for a difficult life. I admittedly don’t know much more than the average person about the personal life of Ozzy, really, but there are enough Mountain Goats songs about him that it’s pretty easy to fill in the gaps.

I don’t know if this is the best song the Goats wrote about him, but it’s certainly the one I’ve thought about the most. Part of what divides the “unreleased” songs from the album cuts is that sometimes the less polished ones leave you feeling a little less shaken than the stuff that got all the polish. Many of them are brief and feel unfinished, even if what is there can sometimes be a wondrous thing. “Song for Black Sabbath’s Second North American Tour” is the reverse in that this story is fully told. We see what might have been and then we see what actually was. The song is the fully narrative, but the fact that this narrative exists at all is the tale.

564. Hail St. Sebastian

Alex Russell Unreleased , , , , , , ,

“Hail St. Sebastian” would be at home on an album and feels more complete than many unreleased songs.

Track: “Hail St. Sebastian”
Album: Unreleased

John Darnielle played “Hail St. Sebastian” in 2012 and told the crowd he thought he wrote it outside of a venue in Nashville at this show in 2009. I lived in Memphis at the time and had gone to Nashville for that show. To date it’s the only show I’ve seen outside of Chicago. It doesn’t mean anything or signify anything, but it’s interesting to me to learn that fact only today after having heard this one so many times over the years. I’ve always loved this one. Is that why? No, of course not, but we look for patterns where there are none.

The song is great and is in the tradition of a lot of Mountain Goats songs of the time about pushing through adversity. It feels like a lost part of Transcendental Youth in that way, though obviously it would need the full sound to really work. It’s fierce, though. I know the rule is you never say an unreleased song should have been on an album, but this one really makes that rule hard to follow.

The story of the actual saint is that Sebastian withstood being shot with arrows while tied to a tree. Over time, he’s become a figure cited in hopes of preventing plague, which would have made this one a big hit during the years of lockdown we just came out of. I’m not going to campaign for it, but I have found the sentiment of this one useful at times and I hope if you’ve never heard it that you spend a few minutes with it.

 

 

563. The Doll Song

Alex Russell Unreleased , , , , , , ,

“The Doll Song” is funny, but it’s reductive to lump it in and call it just a “funny song.”

Track: “The Doll Song”
Album: Unreleased

It is easy to get a little too grand when talking about the unreleased world of the Mountain Goats. You could be an enormous, committed fan of the band who goes to shows and buys merch and loves them to death and it would not be weird that you don’t know an obscure song that was played live a few times twenty five years ago. In fact, the opposite is true. Nevertheless, let’s talk about “The Doll Song.”

There are two versions you can hear online, both with a little bit of context. The one that’s been going around YouTube and was on music sharing programs before that (ask a trusted adult what those were if you were born after 1990) is from 1992 and features some form of the Bright Mountain Choir and the other one is this one, from 1998 in St. Louis. Both of them are pretty intense and the performance and the commentary drive home this is one of the “funny” songs from the early days, but it’s one of the good ones. 

I’ve always been fond of the image of this narrator telling the dolls “you have no compassion” and the central idea, that this person is taking their troubles out on dolls and not dealing with some kind of actual relationship, is a proto version of so many Mountain Goats narrator coping mechanisms. Sure, this one’s not a deep investigation of human relationships that anyone’s getting tattooed on themselves, but I think it’s legitimately funny without that being the only redeeming quality.