Life, and Another, the forthcoming album from Erin Birgy’s shapeshifting group Mega Bog, is so dense with information that it could conceivably come with its own volume of CliffsNotes. Inspired in part by an extended period of solitude, it’s a firehose of cryptic metaphors, veiled allusions, and seemingly disconnected thoughts sprayed against a bright, skeletal frame of jagged jazz-prog. At every turn lies a surfeit of detail that is thrilling and bewildering in equal measure. “Maybe You Died,” though, is different. Where songs like “Weight of the Earth, on Paper” and “Crumb Back” are wiry and spry, this one is subdued: a sullen, minor-key slow burn led by the synths and guitars reminiscent of ’80s Springsteen in his elegiac mode.

Birgy begins with a narrative setup whose economy could rival that of the world’s most famous six-word story: “Smell of wintergreen/Chewing gum/In a Coach leather bag/You gave me/Mom found/Curb sale/What an amazing/Two dollars,” she murmurs, covering four of the five senses in her first three lines alone. Verse by verse, that seemingly innocuous memory leads Birgy to progressively bleaker places as silvery tendrils of guitar swirl in the dark. Though the exact story never becomes clear, the ache of absence is palpable. The song’s hushed finale drives home the gut punch: “Maybe you died/To be more free/Maybe you died/To jump into something/Smooth.” In the background, a coyote howls.