605. Song for My Stepfather

Alex Russell Unreleased , , , , , , ,

“Song for My Stepfather” wasn’t included on The Sunset Tree, but you can hear the same pain in both.

Track: “Song for My Stepfather”
Album: Unreleased

I almost didn’t want to include this one because it’s so obviously personal. John Darnielle’s story of abuse and his stepfather is one you can follow through The Sunset Tree and extensive other sources, but it’s never as direct as it is on “Song for My Stepfather.” The song speaks for itself in that it details abuse and the protective shell that a young Darnielle found for himself to survive and to become another person in the future, not influenced by that abuse but having survived it. There’s really no other word for it, so forgive the double usage of “survive.”

Darnielle has linked this song with “Pseudothyrum Song” when introducing this one and notes that they have the same chord structure and are both about his stepfather. When I wrote about that song in 2017 I did not even consider what is very obvious in retrospect. I have always been guilty of hearing romantic pairings in songs, but these are about a more painful, more personal kind of damage between two people. Darnielle has his reasons for leaving this song off of The Sunset Tree, but you can hear the characters in those songs reckoning with this same kind of despair.

604. The Mummy’s Hand

Alex Russell Unreleased , , , , , , ,

Another lost soul threatens to burst onto the scene, this time literally, in “The Mummy’s Hand.”

Track: “The Mummy’s Hand”
Album: Unreleased

I know I go down this road a lot in this series, but a song like “The Mummy’s Hand” is really, to me, more about the medium than the song itself. John Darnielle played it for a radio session in Seattle in 2005. That radio station no longer hosts the file, but a fan who uploads a lot of rarities uploaded it to YouTube in 2013 with a comment that I have to preserve here, as well: “my favorite song ever (as of last week).” In between those two moments, a fan asked Darnielle during an open call for questions on Reddit if he would ever reissue it and Darnielle made a mummy joke in response. As of today, as far as I know, that is the total history of “The Mummy’s Hand.”

The recording is high quality and the song itself is a great riff on an idea explored through a ton of Mountain Goats songs. It’s good, but not necessarily memorable and I wouldn’t put it in my top handful of unreleased tracks. That’s no condemnation of it so much as it is a point for a lot of songs that Darnielle went back to over and over and played for rooms full of sweaty folks who were “living and dying with this one,” as he once said of a cover of a beloved indie rock staple. I have no doubt “The Mummy’s Hand” has a longer life than that moment, but it’s amazing to me that even that tiny flicker is enough to keep it alive.

603. Minor Joan Crawford Vehicle

Alex Russell Unreleased , , , , , , ,

The story of Joan Crawford takes many turns, but the end is visible in “Minor Joan Crawford Vehicle.”

Track: “Minor Joan Crawford Vehicle”
Album: Unreleased

We do not have the space here to go into the story of Joan Crawford, the real person, but we can touch on the parts of her life that inspired John Darnielle to write “Minor Joan Crawford Vehicle.” Crawford is one of the biggest stars in American film history, but she is debatably even more famous to modern audiences for the arc of her life. She went from an enormous star to a campy, tuned-up version of that same star in Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? to a late-period B-movie actress. That arc happens to people, but rarely as famously and as completely as happened to Crawford, and rarely from such heights. Darnielle introduced the only known performance of the song during a cruise concert by saying he’s fascinated by divorce and people who stay public after their “sell-by date” and you probably already knew that, if you knew his material.

There are a variety of comparisons to make. You could see this as an extension of some of the scenes from Tallahassee, though obviously those characters got to those pre-divorce moments in a less public way. You could see this as what it literally is described to be, another version of so many songs about actual people who find themselves in cigarette-stained dens wondering what went wrong. It’s really both, I think, and while it’s similar to much of Darnielle’s output, it’s another reminder that it can happen to anyone.

602. Song from the Shoreline

Alex Russell Unreleased , , , , , , ,

“Song from the Shoreline” is brief, but it’s powerful, and it serves as a way into so much more.

Track: “Song from the Shoreline”
Album: Unreleased

If you were at Simplon, in Groningen on a specific Wednesday in 1995, you saw this show, where John Darnielle and Rachel Ware played 14 songs. Simplon is still there, three decades later, and, at the time of this writing, is hosting a drum and bass show right this second. YouTube user notasfarwest digitized the show from a tape and uploaded it here a few years ago. I’ve probably watched it all the way through five times. The video is incredible, both that the quality is this good for what had to be just some VHS tape in a stack somewhere and that it exists at all. People seem to believe this is the earliest footage you can find and if it isn’t, it’s at least close.

They opened with “Song from the Shoreline,” which is more of a snippet than a song. The delivery at that show in the Netherlands is passionate and arresting. It feels like a song designed to gather attention and to segue into something else. At that show, that something else was “The Recognition Scene,” one of the best songs the band has ever written, still, here in a world of 600+ songs. I love the simplicity of “Song from the Shoreline” but simplicity leaves little to say. It’s enough to just go watch it and to picture someone making this tape all those years ago and wondering if they could imagine the lifespan.

601. Going Back to California

Alex Russell Unreleased , , , , , , ,

“Going Back to California” tells both the story of a death and the story of a survivor.

Track: “Going Back to California”
Album: Unreleased

First things first: John Darnielle put out a version of “Going Back to California” with a call to support a pro-choice charity in 2016 here, on Tumblr, so if you do not already do so, please do so. The situation is certainly no better here in 2024 than it was in 2016, so now, more than ever. This is not the only song released to support a worthy cause, but I call it out especially because of the path from there to here. Additionally, it’s worth reading Darnielle’s original post to see his forecast of the Ozzy Osbourne material he’d recently written that would not see the light of day soon. It didn’t turn out that way, but who could have known that, then?

“Going Back to California” is about a fatal plane crash. Rather, I suppose, it’s about the reaction to the plane crash that took Randy Rhoads’ life as well as their makeup artist and the pilot, who had done cocaine and talked people into joining him for stunt flights over the band’s tour bus. The song tells us Ozzy’s reaction to Rhoads’ death and the fear it creates for the coming days. It’s a fairly direct song that even includes the anecdote that Rhoads told Ozzy that he was going to drink himself to death if he didn’t slow down. This is more than a recounting of events with that final verse, where we go inside the teller and imagine the apprehension of going on. There is a tomorrow for you, even when there isn’t for those around you.

600. We Shall All Be Healed

Alex Russell Unreleased , , , , , , ,

“We Shall All Be Healed” finds our songwriter going back home again, literally, and drawing a line from A to B.

Track: “We Shall All Be Healed”
Album: Unreleased

Also called “Rose Quarter Drifting,” the unreleased title track “We Shall All Be Healed” recalls the part of Portland John Darnielle lived in during the times described on that album. He lived in what are now the Paramount Apartments, where someone recently (as of this writing) left a review of the place that references “Beat the Devil” that the owner of the property did not get. The owner did reply with “In almost 30 years, things change for the better. Thank goodness there’s no more of that here,” however. I suppose it’s open to debate if that person is referencing the song or the source material John Darnielle actually lived through, but we digress.

This song describes physically going home and wondering what, if any, of you is in there. “You weren’t there, and neither was anybody else” is a helluva line for something so simple, because no one is there if you go home. Someone else could probably break down all the names we hear in this song but the point is neither who they are or where this specific place is. You can go there, if you want. I did, a decade or so ago, because I was in Portland and was curious. It’s just another place, for me. It’s more than that for the man who wrote this song and lived that life. You do not need to go to the Paramount Apartments. You can just listen to the stories that came from there and, if you need to or want to, go to where “it all flared out,” for you.

599. Rescue Breathing

Alex Russell Unreleased , , , , , , ,

“Rescue Breathing” is a cut track from We Shall All Be Healed that takes us uncomfortably close.

Track: “Rescue Breathing”
Album: Unreleased

John Darnielle has said that We Shall All Be Healed was the first album where he was knowingly writing songs from personal experience. Some of what he wrote was too personal and he wasn’t ready to include those, which includes “Rescue Breathing.” When you consider what did make the cut this can seem a strange statement, but I think this comes from the repetition of hearing those songs again and again. If you’ve heard a song like “Mole” dozens of times you get away from the reality of what happens in that song. The album cuts are devastating and brutal, so what of the ones that are even more personal than that?

Rescue breathing is mouth-to-mouth, a life-saving technique that is referenced here both as metaphor and as literal action where one person brings John Darnielle back to life. “There was no tenderness, no good night kiss,” we hear, just literal, necessary physical action done because it had to be done. We’re in the room for this moment and we get the answer to our question. There’s no emotional distance here. There’s just what happened: the trip to get the stuff and then the thing that happens when you use the stuff.

598. Hand of Death

Alex Russell Unreleased , , , , , , , ,

“Hand of Death” is a brutal name for a song that’s actually about a lot of hope.

Track: “Hand of Death”
Album: Unreleased

It feels weird to call a Mountain Goats album “personal” because of the kind of guy John Darnielle is. You could just as easily flip that comment and wonder what the least “personal” album is, right? That said, In League with Dragons is a personal one no matter your scale and thus it is of special interest that “Hand of Death” was the first song written for the album and did not ultimately make the cut.

You can still watch the Facebook Live performance from a hotel room that appears to have an iPod alarm clock in 2018 where Matt Douglass and John Darnielle perform “Hand of Death” and say it has never been played “live or anywhere, by anybody.” At a concert later, Darnielle says John Vanderslice was running the Facebook at the time and was shocked by the positive response that was so immediate. This feels especially fascinating given the proximity to the years of Jordan Lake sessions and pandemic streams and lack of live interaction that no one could see coming at the time but would define the band’s output for a few years to come.

The song itself is potentially about the early years of Darnielle’s songwriting and the title seems to me to be a reference to a Magic: The Gathering card that can destroy (almost) any one living thing. I don’t want to dig too far into that (or most titles) but you can imagine the gusto of the moment that would become what it all became.

597. Acceptable Damages Sutra

Alex Russell Unreleased , , , , , , ,

A familiar moment between familiar characters sparks an unfamiliar emotion in “Acceptable Damages Sutra.”

Track: “Acceptable Damages Sutra”
Album: Unreleased

When the Mountain Goats had to cancel an Australian tour, John Darnielle released a few songs on the band’s forum as a make-good. You can find that post archived here, which makes me feel a certain way on this January morning in the distant future where the archive that site exists on feels especially imperiled. We’ve talked a lot in this space about the act of archiving and what it means to lose something forever (or never have it) and if that archive does eventually go away, I personally feel it’ll be a tremendous loss for us all.

One of those songs was “Acceptable Damages Sutra,” which Darnielle notes based on the guitar has to be from January 2003 or later. This puts it post-Tallahassee but likely pre-We Shall All Be Healed, especially based on the subject matter. Here in the first week of a new year (though one two decades later) we can really relate to this narrator. They have “high hopes // for the coming year” but, of course, “nothing ever really changes here.” We’re pretty firmly in “The Mess Inside” territory here if we view this as a romantic relationship, though here we are confronted with the fact that there could be a solution, if these two had the strength to solve it. They don’t, though, and we get a rare instance where someone approaches, at least, confronting their own involvement in their situation. At that point, we’re back at the title and we realize this person knows what they’re getting into, just the same as all the other Goats narrators.

596. Whon

Alex Russell Unreleased , , , , , , ,

“Whon” uses a ghost town in Texas as a reminder that all things have a chance to fade.

Track: “Whon”
Album: Unreleased

“Whon” exists solely as this recording at Zoop II, a benefit concert from 2009 that we have discussed at length here before. John Darnielle asks someone to come up and hold the lyrics for him and tells the crowd that the song isn’t actually finished and he’s going to finish it right now. The lyrics are ready, but that crowd in that moment hears the chords for the first time. Zoop is a special thing, but even beyond that this is an unheard of moment. That was fifteen years ago as of this writing and as far as it seems, that’s all there is to “Whon.”

The title comes from a town in Texas that was named Whon by mistake as a misunderstanding after an attempt to name something after a worker named Juan. There are a lot of really interesting resources out there that detail the history of Whon, including this charming website full of first-hand accounts but also the Google Street View of the area. I recommend taking a virtual drive around nearby Rockwood, Texas which was photographed in 2008 and 2023. In examples like this one, you can watch Whon (or nearby) change in just that short time. Our narrator in “Whon” is equally fascinated with the passage of time and what happens when everyone leaves. You can see it as barns and lean-tos are in one photograph, but, like so many things, they’re gone by the next one.