After unexplained events, two people have to sell off the stuff of their life in “Estate Sale Sign.”

Track: “Estate Sale Sign”
Album: All Eternals Deck (2011)

The conceit of All Eternals Deck is that it’s a collection of lost, original tarot cards that has been presented now as an album with each song representing a card. You don’t need to think too hard about that, but it does say a lot about the kind of guy John Darnielle is. It’s a loose idea for an album that infuses a little weirdness and mysticism into even straightforward songs.

“Estate Sale Sign” is about a couple that has to get rid of most of their possessions in an estate sale, but it’s also about the general sense of melancholy associated with losing the trappings of your life. These two people don’t necessarily know how they feel about this sale or how they feel about the things in it. The narrator calls various items “crude little wooden idols,” “trinkets,” “treasures,” and “unloved icons.” The broad sense is something we can all understand, because we’ve all had to get rid of things and we’ve all felt the emotional loss connected to physical loss.

The specific, however, is what makes this a Mountain Goats song. “Stock shots, stupid stock shots from the Pomona mall // set up like unloved icons gathering dust up on the wall” tells you exactly what you need to know about the kind of things they’re selling. When the narrator throws in that the stock footage they’re trying to sell is from “films no one remembers” but that they remember “when their names were dear to you and me” we learn about the couple’s relationship.

Popular culture has given us many versions of couples dividing up their stuff after a breakup, but in the world of the Mountain Goats, when something goes badly in your love life you need to sell everything you own in dramatic, infuriating fashion.