One character pleads with another, but you’ll never guess about what, in “Don’t Take the Dogs Away.”

Track: “Don’t Take the Dogs Away”
Album: Taboo VI: The Homecoming (1992)

There is a temptation to say something like “Don’t Take the Dogs Away” is about a person not wanting someone to take the dogs away. There really isn’t much to say about a song like this, but I am fascinated by the live performance that I’ve referenced before where John Darnielle played the entire first album live in 2014. Peter Hughes provides backing vocals on what may be the only performance of “Don’t Take the Dogs Away” in the thirty years since it was written. I love the image of Peter Hughes listening to that first tape to learn the lyrics and preparing to play it in front of a crowd.

The lyrics are simple, though not as simple as “Move (Chicago 196X)” before it. A narrator yells “you do this every time” at someone else, presumably in reference to said dogs. “Just look around the house,” they say, “what should I say to you // where do you want me to begin?” It’s an early look into the situations future Goats characters will find themselves in. It’s not really about dogs, probably, but it’s a fight about something that seems to have happened before.

John Darnielle has said that it’s not worth digging up Taboo VI: The Homecoming and he’s mostly right. When you listen to the two minutes of “Don’t Take the Dogs Away” you don’t walk away with much, but you do see the early signs of Darnielle as a songwriter. A narrator screaming “you do this every time” over and over isn’t very interesting in this moment, but it really is part of the start of everything else.