In the very silly “Faithless Bacchant Song,” a presumably drunk character battles a toad that talks.

Track: “Faithless Bacchant Song”
Album: Bitter Melon Farm (1999)

There is much to love about the fun little song that is “Faithless Bacchant Song.” It’s part of the original “funny” songs that John Darnielle sometimes wrote in the early days. There are still remnants of that old style in the modern Goats songs, notably the “I personally will stab you in the eye” line in “Foreign Object.” If you get the jokes, you enjoy them. If you don’t, then maybe a song where a numbered toad speaks to a man in a clearing just isn’t going to work for you.

Bitter Melon Farm is a compilation album which includes a lot of hard-to-find Goats songs from the first years of the band. John Darnielle says in the liner notes that he feels compelled to not re-release material because it removes the skill of finding those gems on other albums. It’s similar to a story he tells about including great songs on foreign releases, just to be devious and hide some of his best work. It’s a bit tongue-in-cheek, but Darnielle says this song forced his hand on the re-release because the original version had bacchant spelled with one c. He couldn’t let the world think he didn’t know how to spell “bacchant,” which is a follower of Bacchus, the god of wine.

The song is genuinely funny. “Somewhere in the damn forest” is an all-time-great opening line and “fire-bellied toad number five // from what may or may not have been a limited series” is a beautifully specific absurdity. It all leads to a stanza from a folk song about playing with a friend, but the real gem is the ending. It’s a shame this doesn’t get some weird, one-off live play, because “honey it was downright creepy” deserves to be heard yelled from a stage.