unreleased

515. Any Available Surface

Alex Russell Unreleased , , , , , , ,

You can find the sweet longing of “Any Available Surface” everywhere now, but it really only happened that one time, in that one place.

Track: “Any Available Surface”
Album: Unreleased

I’ve said this before here and I think I may be putting too much faith in this comment, but John Darnielle has said that he likes to open a show with a song that no one in the crowd will know. On February 25, 2009, he opened a show you can watch entirely on YouTube with “Any Available Surface,” which surely fits the bill. A few weeks later he played it again and also opened with it. That’s the whole history of “Any Available Surface,” at least as far as the usual sources are concerned. I’m a historian, by education, and that part of me wants to couch every comment like that in open-ended language. 2009 is a long time ago, now, but it’s also an era where I trust, to some degree, that answer has a chance to be complete. Those might be the only two times anyone heard this one.

I’m sure the other version is recorded and there’s this nagging part of me that feels like I’ve seen it live, too, at some show in Chicago. I think it’s more likely that I just came back to this one over and over again, released at the end of the era where I had hundreds of live MP3 files in a folder and just before YouTube and streaming made everything more immediate and open. I think it’s just this quiet, surprising moment where a crowd of devotees heard something they’d never heard and, it turns out, might never hear again.

The song itself is sweet and good, but it’s brief and it speaks for itself. People love the intense ones and the grim narrators, but those are extra powerful in contrast to someone watching someone sail away and then finding them again in the scent they left.

514. Standard Bitter Love Song #1

Alex Russell Unreleased , , , , , , , ,

The original in a series, “Standard Bitter Love Song #1” is very silly, very extreme, and very relatable.

Track: “Standard Bitter Love Song #1”
Album: Unreleased

There are a few “official” songs released in the Standard Bitter Love Song list, but the first one never officially came out. You can only hear it on live recordings and I simply insist your first one be this performance in 2007 at Zoop, a benefit event for Farm Sanctuary in New York. The two Zoop recordings are, I think, the best live Mountain Goats recordings, and the crowd really stomps their way through this one on the recording of “Standard Bitter Love Song #1.”

The title’s a joke, but it’s also not. These are songs from the heart of an angry person, made ridiculous by being someone other than them. There’s a lyric in this song about shooting a kite with a shotgun. That’s an image you conjure up when you’re real-deal mad, but also part of you understands that eventually you will not feel this way. It’s extreme, but this is an extreme feeling. Belting it out in a barn with hardcore fans willing to go to a request show? That’s a once (or twice, there are two Zoops) in a lifetime thing.

On that note, because there’s nowhere else to put it, a friend of mine from college went to Zoop II and asked if I wanted to ride with him. I turned it down for something frivolous and friends, let me tell you, if there’s a Zoop III, sell the clothes off your back to get there. Listen to the guy wolf howl in the second chorus of this performance. You can tell it’s special.

513. Going to Bridlington

Alex Russell Unreleased , , , , , , , ,

John Darnielle thinks it’s got a lazy chorus, but the simplicity of “Going to Bridlington” gives it a powerful honesty.

Track: “Going to Bridlington”
Album: Unreleased

A million years ago, when “online” was a different place, John Darnielle posted as “John” on his band’s forums. When someone mentioned “Going to Bridlington,” an ultra-rare, unreleased song from the old, old days even then in 2008, John Darnielle said that it “blows esp [especially] the lyrics are pretty lame but am happy if people are getting pleasure from it.” A year later, someone yelled for it at a show in Virginia and he played it, but commented on how much he didn’t like it. At that show you can hear a few people, but not many people, singing in the crowd. It’s been played live just a few times and the earliest, on a radio show in Amsterdam in 1996, is the best.

The author is right, sure: “saw you trying to smile // hey, you don’t have to smile for me” is not, probably, his best work. But what it is, to me, is honest. This is a love song that sounds like a love song. It has a moment that many Mountain Goats songs do in that one character sees another one and that act, the act of seeing them, is imbued with monumental power. Sure, it repeats a lot, and sure, the chorus is just that repetition sold by the performance, but love has these little moments. There is power in coming into the kitchen and seeing someone. This is not the only Goats song to have that image, but I love it here. Do I love this song in spite of the author’s distaste for it or because of it? This isn’t one of the all-time best, but there’s something here, and I love a broken toy.

319. Sign of the Crow 2

Alex Russell Unreleased , , , , , , ,

John Darnielle tells us as much as he can in “Sign of the Crow 2,” but part of this story is lost to history.

Track: “Sign of the Crow 2”
Album: Unreleased (but released on the forums by John Darnielle in 2015)

I live in Chicago and in recent years, John Darnielle has done multi-night stays here on most tours. Most of the time I try to go to all of them, but in 2018 I missed the third night of the tour where John Darnielle played “Sign of the Crow 2.” You can hear it here, and you should, and hear some charming line-flubbing that is a staple of any performance of these unreleased, weird songs. This one is notably harder than most of them, with lines like “stripped and scorched and skinned” and similar structure to verses that leads to forgetting your place. In the recording you can hear what sounds like “good job babe” from the person next to the recording, as someone helps John Darnielle with the missing lyric. I’m eternally fascinated by this when it happens at shows and I’m a sucker for it.

Even the official version of “Sign of the Crow 2” has one of these towards the end, which John Darnielle commented on when he released the song himself as an apology for some late pre-releases of Heretic Pride. The demo is good, but live performances are great. It really takes off when he amps up the final verse, nearly screaming it and speeding it up. I encourage you to seek some of those out. The story itself is interesting enough and you can likely piece it together from the lyrics alone, but the performance is really what makes it for me. I am fond of the chorus, however, and I love the idea of getting just a part of the story and knowing that the rest is unattainable.

315. From TG&Y

Alex Russell Unreleased , , , , , , ,

John Darnielle tells a version of his own story to help you with yours in “From TG&Y.”

Track: “From TG&Y”
Album: Unreleased (released by John Darnielle on the forums in 2007)

When John Darnielle released a version of “From TG&Y” on his band’s forums, he asked everyone to sign a pledge. If they listened to it, he said, they had to agree to not demand it is better than songs on The Sunset Tree and to, essentially, let it be what it is. It’s been played live a lot, especially for an unreleased song, and it’s a fan favorite. I will abide by the rules and say simply that I agree that it belongs “with” the songs from The Sunset Tree.

John Darnielle has said in tons of interviews that his earlier narrators are not him. They aren’t even necessarily like him, even in basic details like pronouns. It never occurred to me until I started writing this, but with very rare exceptions, you never find out the gender of a speaker or recipient of most songs. This falls away when the narrator is John Darnielle or when the story is specific, and the narrator in “From TG&Y” is John Darnielle. He has said this is “more or less a true story.”

I pair it with “You’re in Maya” in my mind. Both songs describe a young, troubled John Darnielle and both find him struggling to deal with the world around him. “One more night in this town // is gonna break me, I just know,” he says here, which pairs with “there was nowhere I needed to go // and nowhere I wanted to be.” They’re both songs that won’t be released because they’re special and they both mean a lot to people who are currently going through whatever they’re going through.

290. Hye Kye

Alex Russell Unreleased , , , , , , ,

It’s hard to know how to pronounce “Hye Kye” or just what’s happening in it beyond all the Christmas trees.

Track: “Hye Kye”
Album: Unreleased (Released online by John Darnielle in 2008)

Before we talk about it, John Darnielle asks that people donate to one of two charities if they download “Hye Kye” so here is that link. He released this song and two others after the fanbase donated to help a friend of his who was mugged and hurt badly. He’s put out a number of older songs over the years in similar situations, and I’d be remiss if I didn’t drop the link.

I have no idea how you say “Hye Kye.” I am guessing it rhymes and the first part is “high,” but I have absolutely nothing to base that on. The usual sources are stumped on the name, though Kyle Barbour at The Annotated Mountain Goats did the legwork of pointing out that Indian Hill is also in “From TG&Y” and that Gemco is a defunct department store chain.

It’s a classic Mountain Goats story. Our narrator comments on the weather and then does something odd. There’s really not all that much to decode here. It isn’t better or worse off for that reason, it’s just what it is. This is someone who is carrying a Christmas tree to a parking lot and then they get overwhelmed and lie down among the trees. Is it after Christmas, and is this all the waste? Is it before Christmas, and this is all for sale? But then why is our narrator carrying a tree to where all the others are? When I hear a song like this I don’t care about that answer, but I do wonder what this meant to John Darnielle when he wrote it. The name can stay a mystery, but I’m fascinated by the premise.

265. The Ultimate Jedi Who Wastes All the Other Jedi and Eats Their Bones

Alex Russell Unreleased , , , , , , , , ,

“The Ultimate Jedi Who Wastes All the Other Jedi and Eats Their Bones” is about what you think it’s about.

Track: “The Ultimate Jedi Who Wastes All the Other Jedi and Eats Their Bones”
Album: Unreleased (Released on Soundcloud by Rian Johnson in 2017)

The Mountain Goats song “The Ultimate Jedi Who Wastes All the Other Jedi and Eats Their Bones” is about a Jedi who eats everyone else’s bones. There’s a powerful urge in me to make this entire entry just that sentence, but there is more to say.

The title really does tell you what you’re dealing with, but it’s worth explaining the story. When The Last Jedi was announced, John Darnielle joked that his song “The Ultimate Jedi Who Wastes All the Other Jedi and Eats Their Bones” wasn’t accepted as part of the movie. The title was pretty clearly a joke, but director Rian Johnson told him he had to write it and because John Darnielle is who he is, he did.

I don’t think the content of “The Ultimate Jedi Who Wastes All the Other Jedi and Eats Their Bones” needs much discussion. It’s in the same vein as “Foreign Object” and “Beach House” as a “funny” song, but one that’s mostly funny because you don’t expect it to be delivered the way it is. “Specifically just their bones,” the narrator insists, and says over and over that this Jedi is going to eat their bones. It’s hard to miss, but the repetitions of something you already know is part of the joke of so many Mountain Goats songs.

He’s played it twice, that I can find, since releasing it himself and it seems safe to say those two might be the only two performances. In one he joked that he hoped someone would delete the recording, but conceded that he knows people don’t operate like that. The other performance tells the whole story of how Rian Johnson and John Darnielle got to know each other, and if you’re interested in such things you should check it out.

260. All Devils Here Now

Alex Russell Unreleased , , , , , , , , ,

The neighbors look in on the Alpha Couple in “All Devils Here Now.”

Track: “All Devils Here Now”
Album: Unreleased (Released on Twitter by John Darnielle in 2012)

John Darnielle released “All Devils Here Now” himself on Twitter and said it “shares psychic & geographic space with all the other stuff I was writing about in 2002 & 2003.” Even if he didn’t offer that directly, you’d pick out the Alpha Couple from the story.

Most of the songs about the ill-fated couple in Tallahassee, Florida focus on how they fall in and out of love with each other as they realize this isn’t going to work. It’s rare to get an outsider’s perspective, but “All Devils Here Now” shows us what it’s like to live next to these people and consider their existence without all the details. From what we know, these neighbors see enough, but lines like “you see us at the grocery store // you wonder what we’re shopping for” are evocative. Who among us hasn’t felt that?

The few live versions that exist don’t do justice to the song, for my money. The bugs in the background are real, as John Darnielle confirmed when he released the song, and live it becomes more jaunty than the demo. The demo has the feel of being on the back porch with these two and hearing them tell you these things. There’s an element of self awareness to the delivery mechanism. The Alpha Couple always knows they are doomed and what sets them apart is usually their willingness to engage with that fact, if only internally. They don’t embrace the darkness until the end, which puts this probably closer to the end of the trajectory, but “shrieks and squeals” and “worse for wear” could describe any weekend with these two.

168. The Big Unit

Alex Russell Unreleased , , , , , , , ,

The unreleased “The Big Unit” reinforces the idea of looking on the bright side, even when it’s someone else’s.

Track: “The Big Unit”
Album: Unreleased (Uploaded to the forums by John Darnielle in 2009)

Randy Johnson was one of the greatest pitchers in baseball. He was huge at 6’10” and when he ran into a teammate by accident the teammate called him a “big unit.” That’s not really how people talk, but you can see how it would stick. There are worse nicknames.

In 2009, John Darnielle uploaded “The Big Unit” to the Mountain Goats forums and asked people who listened to it to donate to p:ear, an organization in Portland that supports homeless youth. We Shall All Be Healed gives you all the context you need about why John Darnielle feels passionately about an organization like that, so after they reached out to him it’s easy to see why he wanted to offer up an old cassette outtake to spur his fans to donate.

The song doesn’t need to tie directly back to homeless youths, but it’s easy to see some connection. Our narrator expresses financial woes in grand terms like the bond market and Swiss gold, but these are likely stand-ins for other risks. As the character reflects on watching the “hypodermic needles come in with the tide” we get another glimpse into their Portland (or California, but let’s say Portland). They’re worried about loan sharks from Chicago, too, and you tend to wonder if they’ve made smaller, more short-term purchases than Swiss gold.

Either way, there’s a charming neutrality to “but Randy Johnson throws a baseball 97 miles an hour // and I’m gonna be all right.” These thoughts are disconnected, which makes the word choice of “and” rather than “so” deliberate. Randy Johnson’s baseball acumen isn’t going to save this person, but you cling to anyone’s success and hope it inspires your own when you’re down and out.

028. Counting Song For Bitter Children

Alex Russell Unreleased , , , , , , ,

 

A direct release from John Darnielle, “Counting Song For Bitter Children” is exactly what it sounds like.

Track: “Counting Song For Bitter Children”
Album: Unreleased (Uploaded to the forums by John Darnielle in 2007)

Since it’s 50% “na-na-na-na-na,” “Counting Song for Bitter Children” probably doesn’t require as much lyrical examination as most of the songs in the catalog, but the lyrics are an interesting footnote. The song itself came out of the official forums, when a person listed the opening lines as an example of unforgettable Goats lyrics. John Darnielle himself stepped in and said that he barely remembered the lyrics himself. It existed in the way a lot of songs like “Song for Roger Maris” exist, in that they are mostly talked about rather than actually listened to or performed.

John went on to record himself playing what he remembered of it and put it up online, so now there’s an “official” version of “Counting Song for Bitter Children.” It’s a testament to both John’s relationship with the fanbase and with the older parts of the catalog that he was inspired to record a decade-plus old song just in an attempt to remember it and share it. The result is a very quick, old-school Mountain Goats song with the line “good children get nothing” in it.

It’s a funny song, though “funny” as a concept for a Mountain Goats song is a concept we’ll have to get into later. The early Goats songs are “funny” at times, but like “Counting Song for Bitter Children” they largely use humor to conceal some darkness in a character. This one is an angry person talking to someone that they’re finished with. The message, and even the song itself, doesn’t matter nearly as much as the delivery.