https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lBla7yCx9Yk

“Pale Green Things” closes The Sunset Tree with an open question about how to remember a complex figure in your life.

Track: “Pale Green Things”
Album: The Sunset Tree (2005)

It is a helluva thing that John Darnielle was willing to create The Sunset Tree at all. It’s common to call an artist’s work “personal” and that word applies to a lot of what the Mountain Goats make, but this album requires a further examination of that term. It’s possible to listen to much of the album without squaring yourself in John Darnielle’s personal experience, but that is not true of the closing song “Pale Green Things.” By the time the album ends, the journey through abuse and the challenges of youth has been through a number of experiences. It ends with a difficult, conflicted note.

The line that unlocks everything is in the final verse, where John Darnielle describes a phone call about the death of his stepfather as “she told me how you died at last // at last.” The repetition is important because of the implied question mark on the second part. How could you say it that way, on the one hand, but what if that’s the only way to say it?

This is the album with “This Year” and “Up the Wolves.” The Sunset Tree is largely an album about sad, distant memories and how they can be both difficult and important. It’s a wonder that he was willing to go this deep and that he was willing to share it. You probably relate to some of it broadly, which is why the general, fast, loud ones have been played hundreds of times and endure to such a degree. “Pale Green Things” is a song for one person about one time.