“Pure Intentions” may sound a little dated, but it offers two fascinating minutes of the early Mountain Goats style. 

Track: “Pure Intentions”
Album: Songs for Petronius (1992) and Bitter Melon Farm (1999)

“The sound of the singing on it makes me cringe, but I am aware of a few people who think this is as close to perfection as I’ve come.” – John Darnielle, talking about Songs for Petronius on the liner notes of the compilation Bitter Melon Farm.

Peter Hughes, the bassist for the Mountain Goats, was recently asked in an interview about fans who prefer the early boombox stuff to the modern version of the band. He spoke of those fans the same way John Darnielle usually does. They both essentially said that they understand why people love the torn-down, robotic weirdness of the early singles and cassettes. The band has been around since 1991, and it’s certainly true that there’s been an “evolution” from the early tracks to what the band is now. Whether you think the recent albums are better or worse is a matter of debate, but I tend to agree with Peter Hughes when he says “If John had continued to make a boombox-recorded version of each record alongside the full studio album, which one would you spend more time with? For me, I wouldn’t listen to the boombox one.”

“Pure Intentions” is pure early Goats. It’s a little hard to listen to from a sound quality perspective, but it wasn’t really intended to be judged against Tallahassee. For the most part, all five songs on Songs for Petronius work more as history lessons than they do as things to sit down and listen to in 2015. It’s interesting to hear Darnielle’s early songwriting. “You’re so pretty // I could burst // and I wonder // who’s gonna talk first” wouldn’t be totally out of place on a later album, and it certainly does plant that seed of “what are these two people up to?”