An elderly dog, one that Fred Thomas loved very much, died in 2013. For many of us—if we’re lucky, at least—the death of a beloved pet is one of our first brushes with tragedy. A song touching on it will stir primal memories, and Thomas takes this simple and thematically boundless scenario and does just about everything you can do.-=-=-=-

He eulogizes his dog, who died at the vet, in language that is so tactile it’s unpleasant ("In the fur patch shaved and sutured/ In the tangle of tubes where I lose you/ Everything is changed"). He ponders mortality in the starkest and simplest terms: "So that’s it?/ Eternity equates to forever walking towards without arriving any place?" He breaks down existence into something small and observable, a worm in your palm, and he does so in a rush of exhilarating language that pours out over a small Broadway musical of sounds—smushed, sour-sounding horns, a harmonium, an apparent tinny glimmer of steel drums. By the time it's over, it’s hard not to feel breathless, grateful, and astonished.