Luke Temple‘s “Maryanne Was Quiet” is a strange beast. It’s essentially a short story with a refrain, comparable to the more spoken-word-oriented stuff you hear from Sun Kil Moon. The vocal melody is mostly static until Temple sings, tunefully, “Maryanne was quiet…” Which is not to say the music isn’t important. It’s static, following the vocals, and then rises with the action of this story. The plot follows a young girl named Maryanne, who is given up for adoption by her mother in Ireland to a family in the States and grows up to marry into an abusive relationship. The music functions in the story the way it might in a movie, essential supporting mood and movement. Listen to how it swells around the four-minute mark when the Temple sings, “with her weak little arms,” and Maryanne reaches a point of no turning back.

The song is on Temple’s new album, A Hand Through the Cellar Door, out today on Secretly Canadian.