“The Window Song” could have been lost to time, but now persists to express one truly great image.

Track: “The Window Song”
Album: Protein Source of the Future…Now! (1999)

Protein Source of the Future…Now! is a collection of four early Mountain Goats albums and a handful of songs released on other compilations. “The Window Song” is originally from Pawnshop Reverb, a 22-song collection released by Shrimper in 1992. If you want the original, it’ll run you $40 and you’ll have to find a way to play a cassette.

The truly early stuff in the catalog is full of oddities, but “The Window Song” is a standout. 1992 is the second year of the Mountain Goats and this is the first song that features the Bright Mountain Choir, the all-female backing vocalists that includes original bassist Rachel Ware. It’s an essential part of Goats history, but it would be lost to time without the reissue. Nowadays you can find just about anything from the Goats online, but I think to appreciate this one to the fullest you have to imagine someone trying to order Pawnshop Reverb in 1997. I don’t know that music was better when it was harder to find, but there’s a romanticism to that chase.

No matter how you find it, “The Window Song” is a beautifully sad one. The chorus of “I know you, you’re the one // I’ve spent three seasons trying // to pretend that I never knew” repeats four times as it grows in intensity, but it’s the second verse that always gets me. “I moved toward your voice and my body got so light I could have walked on eggs right then and not broken a one of them” is a classic Goats line. It’s crammed full of words and yet only expresses one idea. Economy of language is usually about expressing an image quickly, but here the specificity helps you think of someone who has this impact on you.