John Darnielle imagines a persistent memory that can’t be forgotten as a hungry ghost in “Keeping House.”

Track: “Keeping House”
Album: Get Lonely (2006)

Get Lonely is a breakup album to a lot of people, but it’s also an album about abstract loneliness. It’s both, fortunately, and either way it means that Get Lonely is difficult to approach.

Get Lonely has a tremendous amount of pain in it. If you ever get a chance to see John Darnielle sing “Wild Sage” at a live show where people will let the experience happen and no one is too drunk, you’ll see something you can’t see anywhere else. The rockers and the screamers are fun, to be sure, but “Wild Sage” will force you inward to places you may not want to go. Whether that’s attractive to you or not is debatable, but it’s certainly memorable.

Catharsis is really the point of the whole thing. You wallow around in songs like “Half Dead” and “In Corolla” and you come through the other side changed, hopefully for the better. It explains why “Keeping House” is a bonus track on the Japanese version and not an official song on Get Lonely. You need a slower tempo to wallow properly and compare to yourself, so the lively, bouncy “Keeping House” won’t fit.

It’s still thematically appropriate. Much like Get Lonely itself, “Keeping House” goes through the motions of trying to forget someone with no real intention of letting it happen. The character does all they can to stay busy and happy, but it isn’t enough. “So let all the lights blaze, keep your heart light // Play really loud music all hours of the night” reminds us of a time we tried to stave off a memory and failed. You should still try, but don’t be too upset when that someone pops up again in your head.