The Alpha Couple is caught in a memorable, beautiful moment in the days before in “Alphabetizing.”

Track: “Alphabetizing”
Album: Chile de Árbol (1993) and Protein Source of the Future…Now! (1999)

John Darnielle has played “Alphabetizing” live more often than he has most songs from 1993. “I will defend this song, from the earlier ones, I think it’s alright,” he said at a show at Pitzer College, his alma mater, in 2006. During several performances, he has commented about how it ends abruptly on Chile de Árbol and he thus makes an effort to end it that way even now at live shows. It shines in these performances in ways the early songs don’t always work. They’re working seeking out.

The title hints at it, but the man himself has confirmed at live shows that this is a song about the Alpha Couple. We start with one admiring another, in lyrics that foreshadow “Going to Georgia” in a way. “I love you especially // because I saw you // coming through // the screen door // up on the second floor // out on the balcony” is a mundane string of details, but it tells us this character is overcome. When you love someone above all else and, when pressed, say it’s because they came through a screen door, you aren’t in a place to behave rationally. That’s either pure love or the blinding hope that comes before what comes after that.

We’re in familiar territory in the second verse. “The air was thick with alcohol,” our narrator now says, and pleads for time to make them forget the good moments. “Let the years come and take away my memory // I will not forget the shock that ran though me,” they say, and tell us again about this beautiful moment they witnessed. This is still the good times, but a mist of booze and an understanding that good times don’t last are all we need to know where we’re headed.