The neighbors look in on the Alpha Couple in “All Devils Here Now.”

Track: “All Devils Here Now”
Album: Unreleased (Released on Twitter by John Darnielle in 2012)

John Darnielle released “All Devils Here Now” himself on Twitter and said it “shares psychic & geographic space with all the other stuff I was writing about in 2002 & 2003.” Even if he didn’t offer that directly, you’d pick out the Alpha Couple from the story.

Most of the songs about the ill-fated couple in Tallahassee, Florida focus on how they fall in and out of love with each other as they realize this isn’t going to work. It’s rare to get an outsider’s perspective, but “All Devils Here Now” shows us what it’s like to live next to these people and consider their existence without all the details. From what we know, these neighbors see enough, but lines like “you see us at the grocery store // you wonder what we’re shopping for” are evocative. Who among us hasn’t felt that?

The few live versions that exist don’t do justice to the song, for my money. The bugs in the background are real, as John Darnielle confirmed when he released the song, and live it becomes more jaunty than the demo. The demo has the feel of being on the back porch with these two and hearing them tell you these things. There’s an element of self awareness to the delivery mechanism. The Alpha Couple always knows they are doomed and what sets them apart is usually their willingness to engage with that fact, if only internally. They don’t embrace the darkness until the end, which puts this probably closer to the end of the trajectory, but “shrieks and squeals” and “worse for wear” could describe any weekend with these two.