Long before he became an acclaimed literary novelist and the famous-ish frontman of an indie rock institution, the Mountain Goats’ John Darnielle was a cult-favorite songwriter. On hard-to-find releases spread across a vast spectrum of DIY labels, Darnielle would crank out vast numbers of fiery lo-fi acoustic songs. Many of those songs were both quite short and quite silly. Darnielle, I am delighted to reports, is still perfectly capable of flexing that muscle.

Right now, the Mountain Goats are getting ready to release the new full-band album Getting Into Knives, which they recorded just before quarantine. We’ve already posted the early singles “As Many Candles As Possible” and “Get Famous.” This will be the second album that the Mountain Goats have released during quarantine. Back in the early days of this whole episode, Darnielle went old-school, writing and recording Songs For Pierre Chuvin by singing straight into a boom box — the way he used to do. And today, Darnielle demonstrated for his Twitter followers just how easy this kind of thing is for him.

On Twitter this morning, Darnielle wrote, “early Mountain Goats days involved lots of songs that were essentially paeans to objects in my immediate environment that delighted me. if this were 1992 I’d have a song called ‘Bomb-Ass Teacup’ by noon.” The idea must’ve stuck in his head, since he had a song called “Bomb-Ass Teacup” by 10AM. It’s 18 seconds long, and it rules. Here it is:

This song has already led to a factual answer to Darnielle’s rhetorical question.

Getting Into Knives is out 10/23 on Merge. Songs For Pierre Chuvin is out now. “Bomb-Ass Teacup” will probably never get an official release, but I wouldn’t put money on that.