June 2 - You Or Your Memory

God, this is going to be a month.

The first thing to note about this song is that by the standards of the Mountain Goats it's incredibly simple. A narrative without allusion, without hiding. The events of a young man in pain contemplating something. The rest of the album is there to explain how he got here, but this song is painfully simple and to the point.

The second thing to note about this song is that it's basically fucking perfect. A rolling, almost sweet song that carefully packages how desperately fucking sad it is. This is a young man, barefoot, checking into the cheapest hotel room he can find and walking barefoot to a convenience store to buy the most deliberately pathetic things possible to overdose on. Baby aspirin. The kind of wine coolers that kids sneak to get drunk on. This is the despair of youth. This is despair about youth. It would be a sad story that ended here, made sadder by the astonishing alive album that follows this.

I'm glad the narrator made it through the night. I hope everyone does. And may we all see the real truth about us. Even if it hurts. Especially if it hurts.