Faithless Bacchant Song

Faithless Bacchant Song
Album	Those Pre-Phylloxera Years
Released	1994
Artist	the Mountain Goats
Length	1:59
Previous Track	"Rubby Bulbs" (Neutral Milk Hotel)
Next Track	"Laugh at Me (Live in Holland 10/92)" (Duh)

Faithless Bacchant Song is the second song on the compilation Those Pre-Phylloxera Years. It was re-released on the compilation Bitter Melon Farm.

Lyrics

Somewhere in the damn forest
Where the fat vines look like my brother's arms
Thick and ripe
I'm trying to get out for days and these green vines
Keep getting in my way
I came up to a clearing
Where the crosscurrents cooled my face
I would've sat down there in the middle
I would've rested just a little
But for the fire-bellied toads
See the ground was wet and they were everywhere
Fire-bellied toad number five
From what may or may not have been a limited series
Opened up his little mouth
As though to speak
And then he spoke
And then he spoke to me, and he said
You can't holler down our rain barrel
You can't climb our apple tree
I don't want to play in your yard
If you won't be good to me
Honey it was downright creepy

Comments by John Darnielle About this Song

• "You want to know the deep, dark truth about how neurotic I am? I mean do you really, really want to know? Fine, then. When Ajax and I started discussing reissuing all this stuff, I was of two minds. Mind #1, the louder and more punk rock of the two, said: 'Screw reissues. If they didn't buy it the first time around, let 'em suffer.' I am often attentive to the voice of Mind #1, since I feel a deep personal debt to the people who've been faithfully buying every little record that had a Mountain Goats song on it since day one. But Mind #2, who's in charge of petty resentments, spoke to my vanity, saying: 'The compilation that put out 'The Faithless Bacchant Song' spelled 'Bacchant' with only one 'c,' and everyone who bought it assumes that you don't know how to spell. Boy, do they think you're stupid.' Wherefore this tiny song, which is all full of faults, is actually in one sense the glue holding the whole thing together." -- Bitter Melon Farm liner notes