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This Year 365 songs: March 8th and 9th
Mar. 9th, 2026 11:08 am The songs for this pair of days are "Stars Fell On Alabama" and "Red Choral Diamond Spray"
The former song concludes the Firearms Suite, and is a perfectly fine song, but I am mostly excited about the comment by Darnielle in the annotations that he had wanted to put the name of the bay in the song, and specifically wanted it to be called Half Moon Bay, but that is the name of a city in California, and "[y]ou can do a lot of things as a writer, but putting Half Moon Bay in Alabama isn't one of them"
The second track is off of an album that Darnielle didn't release, "Hail and Farewell, Gothenburg", which was unreleased for 11 years and then leaked to the internet without Darnielle's permission. Darnielle was very upset about the leak, and preferred that people not listen to leaked album. You can read a bit more about the whole situation here. Ultimately, he has taken to playing some of the songs live, and seems to have made his peace with the leak (though the album is still unreleased and the tracks are not available on the mountain goats youtube channel).
I'd never tracked down any songs off this album previously (there is a lot of released Mountain Goats that I haven't made my way through yet, to say nothing of the artist's stated preference for people not to listen to the leaked album). This song is all right (I take it that its inclusion here tacitly includes permission to listen to it, but maybe not?).
The former song concludes the Firearms Suite, and is a perfectly fine song, but I am mostly excited about the comment by Darnielle in the annotations that he had wanted to put the name of the bay in the song, and specifically wanted it to be called Half Moon Bay, but that is the name of a city in California, and "[y]ou can do a lot of things as a writer, but putting Half Moon Bay in Alabama isn't one of them"
The second track is off of an album that Darnielle didn't release, "Hail and Farewell, Gothenburg", which was unreleased for 11 years and then leaked to the internet without Darnielle's permission. Darnielle was very upset about the leak, and preferred that people not listen to leaked album. You can read a bit more about the whole situation here. Ultimately, he has taken to playing some of the songs live, and seems to have made his peace with the leak (though the album is still unreleased and the tracks are not available on the mountain goats youtube channel).
I'd never tracked down any songs off this album previously (there is a lot of released Mountain Goats that I haven't made my way through yet, to say nothing of the artist's stated preference for people not to listen to the leaked album). This song is all right (I take it that its inclusion here tacitly includes permission to listen to it, but maybe not?).
