“Some Other Way” looks at grand gestures and doing dangerous things to “win back” someone who is long gone.

Track: “Some Other Way”
Album: Undercard (2010)

Undercard is the first album from The Extra Lens, which is John Darnielle and Franklin Bruno. They’re same two guys that make up The Extra Glenns. Franklin Bruno plays piano and several other instruments on a number of Mountain Goats releases. At some point, the difference between The Extra Lens/Glenns and the Goats themselves becomes academic.

Franklin Bruno wrote “Some Other Way” and it shows. The opening four lines see the narrator string a rope to hang themselves and fill a pot of tea with poison. Just as quickly, they decide those aren’t going to work and that they need “some other way” to earn the love of another person. Bruno also wrote the song “Houseguest” as a part of Nothing Painted Blue, which has been covered dozens of times by the Goats and features a similarly unhinged narrator trying to express themselves in dark ways.

By the next verse we’re back to the same scene. The windows are sealed and the gas is filling the room and then, just as suddenly, the window is smashed and the narrator is back to the drawing board. There are a lot of ways to read the motivations behind these actions, but the threat of suicide as an unhealthy means of earning love is desperate behavior. The song fades out with a repetition of “to make you love me” that’s haunting given what we know about the character, but the music is almost jaunty. It lends a pulse to the song and seems to suggest that while this person is definitely going about it wrong, they know that. “There are things a letter won’t explain,” after all, but you can’t make your case if you aren’t here to make it.