The Mountain Goats list a series of things you might need in “No, I Can’t.”

Track: “No, I Can’t”
Album: Transmissions to Horace (1993) and Songs for Peter Hughes (1995) and Bitter Melon Farm (1999)

There are different versions of “No, I Can’t.” The original from Transmissions to Horace is a little slower and a little sadder. The version from Songs for Peter Hughes is fully danceable and has some beautiful backing vocals from Rachel Ware. Neither is better than the other, though I’ve come to love the faster one and it’s the one I think of when I think of “No, I Can’t.” The bass is nice and there’s a scream in there that’s worth hearing and the “I don’t know what I, I don’t know what I, I don’t know what I ever did without it” that leads into the final verse is just something else.

Kyle Barbour, whose excellent Annotated Mountain Goats page is currently down but will hopefully be back eventually, listed 43 specific things John Darnielle has inserted into this song live. The song is essentially a list of things one person brings another person, which lends itself to edits. I encourage you to seek out live versions to hear examples, but I have to call out Barbour’s diligence here. Is it significant that one of the items is a similar Panasonic to what John Darnielle would have been using to record his early work? Do you need it to be significant? Sometimes you just need someone to bring you exactly the right thing and you don’t even know until they do. You can feel the passion here and you know Darnielle means it when he says “I don’t know what I ever did without it.”