February 16 - Noche Del Guajolote

There's always something pleasant about a recording that sounds like a party. One of the reasons why (and I'm sure we'll get to them eventually) the Jordan Lake Sessions are so beloved by Mountain Goats fans is that they sound like friends playing together. The same is true about this little folk country warble-along. It's turkeys and silly vocals and friendship captured by a microphone that happened to be there.

We're back in the realm of Mountain Goats songs for weird compilations, this one was recorded at a radio station in California with various members of the Bright Mountain Choir and put out by Walt Records, one of the multiple tiny record labels to which the Mountain Goats lent songs in their early days. There's a chaos I enjoy about that, of a band just rolling into a little studio somewhere, throwing songs together, getting them on wax (or whatever other medium), then moving on to the next thing in the next place. Musicians as bards, as troubadors, giving inspiration.