The ultimate memento mori, “Nikki Oh Nikki” helps you find perspective in a terrible way.

Track: “Nikki Oh Nikki”
Album: Unreleased (though recorded and released by John Vanderslice on Life and Death of an American Fourtracker)

Pitchfork called John Darnielle’s lyrics on “Nikki Oh Nikki” “surprisingly unremarkable” and slammed that song and “Amitriptyline” from John Vanderslice’s album Life and Death of an American Fourtracker as the low points of the album. They’re my two favorite songs on the record. Pitchfork also says that Vanderslice’s version of “Nikki Oh Nikki” is too reminiscent of a Pink Floyd song so your mileage, as ever with Pitchfork, may vary. That seems a simplistic comparison, to me.

Darnielle wrote the lyrics for “Nikki Oh Nikki” though the final Vanderslice version is undeniably his own. Percussive comparisons to “Money” aside, it sounds like a Vanderslice song. His vocals on “like a tumor” and similar wails are what you come to Vanderslice for, with the sole performance linked above by Darnielle as the only point of comparison we have. As near as I can tell, that’s the only recording you can find. The production is different, but the final version is also pared way down lyrically. Vanderslice’s version in 2002 is just the thrust of the message. Darnielle’s in 1997 includes an additional verse about a paranoia that everyone is sharing your secrets. The differences aren’t crucial because the result is the same: worry or not, it’s no big deal. That might be comforting, in a certain light, but it may be less so as you realize and insistently confront the fact that you are going to die.