John Darnielle finds himself with dark thoughts in a motel in “You or Your Memory.”

Track: “You or Your Memory”
Album: The Sunset Tree (2005)

You can look up the motel that’s described in “You or Your Memory.” You can piece it together from live shows and figure out where this real place is and go see it. I normally would defend you doing so as a part of connecting with any Mountain Goats song. This is the only case where I would say you don’t need to do it. I think you can picture it when you hear it and if you go seek to verify if you were right or not, you will only be disappointed. Trust me when I say that you’re right, you don’t need to go see.

“You or Your Memory” is a song that challenges you to discuss it because it is so self-evident. It’s a song about what it is. Someone comes home to a motel and lays everything out and has to make a choice. John Darnielle has said it’s a Hobson’s choice, a term for a situation where someone can either take what is available or choose to take nothing. It’s all a way of talking around the situation, in that the narrator is dealing with loss and isn’t sure how to approach the next day.

The Sunset Tree is about loss. It’s a complicated loss, a death where in “Pale Green Things” the narrator, John, even says “they told me how you died ‘at last’ // ‘at last?'” Loss is never easy, by sheer nature, but it is harder with other things layered on top. “You or Your Memory” is a song about the layers in yourself that you bring to how you process loss.