February 11 - Wrong!

Hello keyboard my old friend...

There's something lovely about the Mountain Goats songs that got made for little tapes or compilations or were otherwise sent off into the world to find their way. Album tracks or tracks for John's cassettes invariably have a sense of planning and consideration. They're the ones that are going to be part of the Canon, as it were. This makes them orchids: kept in the hothouse, fed carefully, looked after. By contrast a song John wrote and recorded for someone else's mixtape or for a cassingle is a handful of wildflower seeds flung from a car window that grow where they land.

Wrong! is a burst of experimentation, feeling like it has more in common with the home-recording end of Britpop than with much of the Mountain Goats oeuvre to this point. Other than the distinct Darnielle vocal this is a different kind of sad relationship song, feeling like something in a cramped city apartment, not a deserted midwest fallow field.

Wildflowers grow in those fallow fields. If you take the time to look.