Mountain Man from Mole Hill

From Awkward Middle Phase: Seth Timbs' Home Demos, Volume One

Written on guitar and first performed at the first of two of the band’s only piano-less sets, this one in the summer of 2000, “Mountain Man from Mole Hill” essentially takes its premise from the Beatles’ “The Fool on the Hill” and runs with it, fleshing out the ideas into a more fully realized vision of what Paul McCartney was trying to say and do.

The song begins with a marching drum intro and then ascends into a high place in which the mountain man can see the world below, comparing the people in the world below to ants as they busy themselves with making mountains out of mole hills. The song has no true chorus to speak of, using the spoken title as the refrain to punctuate each verse at the beginning and the end. Its bridges then serve as the two haiku within the song that almost show us what sets the mountain man apart from the ants as the first one says,
“And the ladder to heaven
Climbs only halfway,
But it’s over the weather
And the sun shines all day,”

while the second one says,

“And the sooner or later
Gets closer each day.
But it’s just human nature
To sit and watch and wait.”

The second of these then goes into a blistering Doug Payne solo as the song then leads back into a third verse amid some very Brian Wilson-esque backing vocals. It then cools down as it brings us down from its higher place and coasts us back into a station to go forth and work among the ants, hopefully to fight against their industry and ability to turn mountains into mole hills, whatever they may be.