Does it matter if the sky literally comes down upon you, with the right person, in “Tulsa Imperative?”

Track: “Tulsa Imperative”
Album: Unreleased

How many of these are there, I wonder? The story goes that John Darnielle couldn’t get a take of “Tulsa Imperative” that he liked and thus it got put in the bin. I am repeating a story I can’t verify there, but it does seem reasonable based on Peter Hughes releasing his version as part of his band Diskothi-Q which you can hear here that, honestly, sounds a lot like the version that we have today. It may seem weird to say this, but Peter Hughes has to be the biggest John Darnielle fan out there. He saved an unknowable amount of projects from the mercurial tendencies of the frontman and obviously is an indispensable Goat even beyond his “fandom.”

“Tulsa Imperative” seems to describe a UFO but, in typical early Darnielle style, it uses a spectacular event as lead-in for a person saying that even that magnificent moment pales in comparison to what we have right here, right now. My read may be way off, but I see this as another one in that long list of love songs about someone who should, probably, be taken by something else, but they are just so in love with the heat and the moment and it’s you, of course, it was always going to be you.