The existentialism of an enemy marking time for a hero fills “Down Here Where the Bullet Bills Are.”

Track: “Down Here Where the Bullet Bills Are”
Album: Unreleased (but included as part of an email newsletter from the band in 2019)

You could easily leave out “Down Here Where the Bullet Bills Are” from a series like this. The line of what is “a song” or what we’re “allowed” to talk about is blurry, anyway, but despite a rule about not talking about the adorable songs John Darnielle has written expressly to sing for his kids, I think this one “counts.”

It’s a short song about the life of an enemy from the Mushroom Kingdom of the Mario games, presumably Super Mario Odyssey given the details about a cap and the time this was recorded. There are other Mountain Goats songs that happen in the world of video games and, yes, even other songs that happen in the Mario universe. But this one works because it’s silly on the surface, with a title that came straight from John Darnielle’s son, but it’s also a sneaky commentary on what happens beyond the hop-and-bop world of Mario. I won’t try to make the case for this as some grand macabre statement about heroes and villains, but it does, at least, briefly make you wonder what life must be like as you wait your turn for the hero to come for you.