"Maybe after He's Gone"

Yester-day, I read the lyrics for "Maybe after He's Gone" in The "Odessey": The Zombies in Words and Images and noticed a couple features in it.

From verse to verse, there's progressively less of "she," which illustrates her leaving.  She's there at the beginning ("She told me she loved me"); by the second verse, she herself is gone, and there are just vestiges of her left ("Her smile, her tears are part of me"); and by the third verse, the narrator is by himself ("I'm on my own... I'm alone").

I also realized that "Maybe after He's Gone" starts very similarly to the second and third verses of "Tell Her No."  The first line of "Maybe after He's Gone" is "She told me she loved me," which is only slightly different from "And if she should tell you, 'I love you'" and "If she tells you, 'I love you'" in "Tell Her No."

Odessey and Oracle

According to the Zombie Heaven liner notes, fifty years ago to-day (27 December 1967), the Zombies mixed the stereo versions of "Time of the Season," "Beechwood Park," "Maybe after He's Gone," and "I Want Her She Wants Me."

The entry for the next day (28 December 1967) is "EMI Abbey Road Room 53 Odessey & Oracle (master)."  I'm not entirely sure what this means, but I'm assuming it has something to do with gathering together all of the mixes.  There's a corresponding entry for 1 January 1968 that reads "EMI Abbey Road Room 53 Odessey & Oracle original master (stereo)," so I'm assuming (again) that this 28 December entry refers only to the mono version of the album.

"Care of Cell 44" b/w "Maybe after He's Gone"

According to the Zombie Heaven liner notes and Russo's Collector's Guide, fifty years ago to-day (24 November 1967), the Zombies' "Care of Cell 44" b/w "Maybe after He's Gone" (CBS 3087) was released in the U.K.  Russo's Collector's Guide lists the U.S. release date of the same single (Columbia 4-44363) as 20 November 1967 (although this isn't listed in the Zombie Heaven liner notes).

Odessey and Oracle

According to the liner notes of both Zombie Heaven* and the 50th anniversary edition of Odessey and Oracle, fifty years ago this month (July 1967), the Zombies recorded "Beechwood Park," "Maybe after He's Gone," and "I Want Her She Wants Me."  Because Abbey Road was booked, these sessions were held at Olympic Studios.  According to the liner notes of the 50th anniversary edition of Odessey and Oracle, the sessions' being held at Olympic Studios is the reason precise dates aren't available.

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*In the track-by-track section, the Zombie Heaven liner notes list "July or August" for these three songs, but in the chronology, they're all listed under July.

"A Rose for Emily"

A couple days ago, I was thinking about the unused mellotron part for "A Rose for Emily" (I figured out half of it last week).  I'm not sure about the part for the third verse yet, but the part during the second verse is only five pitches:

I realized that these are the same five pitches that make up the entirety of the lead vocal melody for the chorus of "Maybe after He's Gone" ("Maybe after he's gone / She'll come back, love me again...")

Were that mellotron part used for the final version of "A Rose for Emily," it would have been yet an-other musical element that ties the songs on Odessey and Oracle together.

"Maybe after He's Gone"

A couple days ago, I realized something about the bridge of "Maybe after He's Gone," specifically the line "All the days and all the nights."  Colin Blunstone sings "All the days and" by himself (although I'm pretty sure his vocal is double-tracked), but then the backing vocals (I'm assuming it's both Rod Argent and Chris White) come in for "all the nights."  There's a bit of staccato for that phrase too, and both of those things musically emphasize the "all."  The additional voices sort of represent the multitude, and the insistence of that slight staccato is almost like a tally counting up the number of nights.

"The Best Is Yet to Come"

I've been transcribing the song lyrics from the liner notes of Colin Blunstone's On the Air Tonight album, and I noticed a small thing about "The Best Is Yet to Come."  In the bridge there are the lines "And if the stormy nights surround you / I will always shine the light that guides you."  There's a similar image of surrounding night* in "Maybe after He's Gone" on Odessey and Oracle:  "As the night folds in around me / Night surrounds me; I'm alone."

"Maybe after He's Gone" was written by Chris White, and the liner notes of On the Air Tonight credit "The Best Is Yet to Come" to Charlie Grant, Pete Woodroffe, and Melanie Chisholm (Woodroffe is also credited with playing keyboards on the album, although specific tracks aren't mentioned).  I'm not sure if this line in "The Best Is Yet to Come" was written as a reference to "Maybe after He's Gone," but I think it might illustrate something about Blunstone's taste.

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*There's also "I want to hold you tight / While the warmth of the night surrounds us" in "Don't Go Away" (also written by Chris White), but - like I mentioned back in November - the situations are different.  The surrounding night described in "The Best Is Yet to Come" has the same desolation that's in "Maybe after He's Gone."

"You'll Go from Me"

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As part of my Collection Audit project, I'm listening to the Zombie Heaven discs again.  I just listened to the third disc, and I noticed the lines "I want to hold you tight / While the warmth of the night surrounds us" in "You'll Go from Me" (the demo of what became "Don't Go Away").  I'm not sure of those line breaks, though.

In any case, these lines are fairly similar to some in "Maybe after He’s Gone," which - like "You'll Go from Me" - was written by Chris White.  The last verse is:  "I feel so cold; I'm on my own / As the night folds in around me / Night surrounds me; I'm alone."

The situations are the same:  night is surrounding the speaker/singer, but there's a difference in temperature.  In "You'll Go from Me" and "Don't Go Away" (the lyrics are the same; I think it's only the structure that's different), it's "the warmth of the night" because the speaker/singer is with a girl who loves him, but the speaker/singer in "Maybe after He's Gone" is "so cold" because he's alone.

Odessey and Oracle {Revisited}

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Collection Audit:

Over the last two days, I listened to the two discs of the Zombies' Odessey & Oracle {Revisited}: The 40th Anniversary Concert.  I noticed some things (with melismas, naturally) on two songs on the first disc. 

"Maybe after He's Gone"

The "breathe" in the line "I feel I'll never breathe again" is sung to two syllables instead of just one.  There's a deliberateness in how it's sung, almost as if the speaker/singer wants to draw out the breaths he has now because he feels there will soon be a time he can't breathe at all (the next line is "I feel life's gone from me"). 

"Tell Her No"

The "charms" in the line "And if she tempts you with her charms" has a melisma.  Instead of the one syllable it's spoken with, there are multiple syllables, as if to make the "charms" musically alluring. 

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Both of these features are on the original recordings that the Zombies did in the '60s.  However, on this live album, the melisma'd "breathe" in "Maybe after He's Gone" is more prominent, and the melisma to which the "charms" in "Tell Her No" is sung actually has more notes than the original recording.  (It's G# E F# in the original; G# F# E F# in this live version.)

I found some more things about Zombies songs while doing my Collection Audit project.  I didn'’t feel it important enough to include in that post, but I also noticed some consonance in "“Hung up on a Dream."  "I stood astounded staring hard."

I was (and I guess still am) very excited about that melisma in "Tell Her No" partially because it's an example of how songs can develop through playing them live so often (it's like the guitar part that precedes the second verse of "She's Not There;" it's not in the original, but it's been in every live version for about the last eight years, so it's become a part of the song).  I referenced every live version of "Tell Her No" I have, and the period live recordings (on the fourth disc of Zombie Heaven) have the three-note melisma, but the more recent live versions (on Live at the Bloomsbury Theatre, London; Live at Metropolis Studios; and Extended Versions) all have the four-note melisma.

"Maybe after He's Gone"

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I listened to the second disc of The Pet Sounds Sessions to-day, and during the tracking session for "God Only Knows," Brian Wilson says something about the E E F# G phrase that leads into the verses.  I didn't think very much about this at the time, but just now I was playing "Maybe after He's Gone," and I discovered that the vocal melody in the first two verses starts with that same E E F# G phrase.  The rhythm is slightly different, but the notes are the same.

Pet Sounds is often cited as an influence on Odessey and Oracle, but in interviews and things, the Zombies haven't seemed to talk about it all that much.  Rod Argent's talked about bass parts, but not very specifically, and Colin Blunstone has talked about being a fan of the Beach Boys.  "Maybe after He's Gone" is a Chris White song though, and I can't seem to remember his mentioning Pet Sounds in any interviews.

It's such a small phrase that they have in common, and that's even excepting the difference in rhythm, so I'm not sure whether there's anything to this or not.

"Maybe after He's Gone"

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Yester-day I listened to Odessey and Oracle, and the a cappella ending of "Maybe after He's Gone" caught my ear.  I already knew the main vocal melody and one of the harmonies, so all I had to do was figure out the third part, which sounded pretty simple.

I don't think my voice is that great (certainly not when compared to the original), but it's a good enough example, although I'm pretty sure I'm singing Blunstone's part an octave lower than in the original.

Blunstone sings the melody, and that chromatic phrase (panned left) is Argent, so that third phrase is White.  "Maybe after He's Gone" is one of White's songs so I don't know how involved Argent was in the arrangement, but it's a fairly good example of what Blunstone said about the Zombies' harmony in the 2013 SXSW interview:

Rod would try and set a very easy harmony for Chris, because he had to play bass at the same time, so he would be playing a different note to the note he's singing. I don't know how bass players do this, so Chris' harmony very often would be just a straight line. [Sings a single note] "Ummmmm," like that. And then Rod would have to fill in all the holes. So his harmony would be [sings notes at seemingly random intervals] "la-la-la-la-la-la," like that.

While this is an a cappella section, there are different notes in White's harmony from what he plays on bass when this section isn't a cappella.  And it is pretty simple.  It's just four whole notes.  The interesting thing, though, is that the last three of those four notes, like the entirety of Argent's part, form a descending chromatic phrase:  F#, F, E.  So they too contribute to the song's feeling of sadness through the seemingly-inherent melancholy in descending chromatic phrases.

Argent's part here isn't as random as it might be in some other songs; it's just a chromatic phrase from E to C#.

I still want to look at this part more closely with notation, but one thing I noticed just when playing the parts together on piano is that while they resolve to an A major chord, none of the constituent notes are next to each other.  By that I mean there's (from lowest to highest) an E (White), a C# (Argent), and an A (Blunstone), and there's an A between that E and C#, and an E between that C# and A.  They could have resolved to an A major within the interval of a fifth, but instead it's an A major with its three notes spread over an interval that's more than an octave.  The song resolves, but there's still something off and almost-literally isolated and disjointed, which matches the feeling of the lyric.

It's like the first A major here, not like the second, which is more typical:

In writing out that paragraph above, I've realized that the A major is actually upside down in a way.  It's E, C#, A where usually it would be A, C#, E, so it might also act as an indication of how turned around the singer/speaker's life is now that he's alone.

Odessey and Oracle

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I listened to Odessey and Oracle to-day (with bonus tracks), and I discovered a lot of new things!

"Care of Cell 44"

The last three lines of the first verse all start with words that end in "-ing," but their meaning is sort of ambiguous.

Good morning to you I hope you're feeling better, baby
Thinking of me while you are far away
Counting the days until they set you free again
Writing this letter hoping you're OK

The "thinking" seems to go along with the "you're" from the previous line, so: "I hope you're feeling better [and] thinking of me...."  (Although the "thinking of me..." could also be a participial.)  The subject of "counting" could be either the "you" or the singer/speaker.  "I hope you're... counting the days..." or "[I am] counting the days."  (Again, "counting the days..." could be a participial too, modifying either the "you" or the speaker/singer.)  The subject of "writing" is clearly the speaker/singer.  Things could be divided a couple different ways there.

"A Rose for Emily"

There's an extra line in the second and third verses (which I knew), but this time I realized the significance of the music's repetition there.  The chords under the second half of "The roses in her garden fade away" (A and Bm) are also used for the next line: "Not one left for her grave."  Musically, there's a return to "the roses in her garden," as if to check if there's one for her grave.

"Maybe after He's Gone"

There's some parallelism in the lines "I feel I'll never breathe again / I feel life's gone from me."  Particularly because both start with "I feel," "I'll never breathe again" is equated to "life's gone from me."

"Brief Candles"

I got thinking about the "tight" in the first line: "There she sits her hands are held, tight around her glass."  In that rendering, it's an adjective, but it could also be parsed as a flat adverb:  "There she sits her hands are held tight[ly] around her glass."  There's no real difference in the meaning, but grammatically it's different.

I also discovered a consistency in the rhyme scheme.  Each verse has a rhyme scheme of AABB, but the B's carry over: the last two lines of the first verse end with "stay" and "way;" the those in both the second and third verses end with "say" and "way."

I think I noticed this before but forgot to write about it: the vocals are double-tracked during Blunstone's verse (as are the others'), except for the second "say" in "He does not say a single word, no word of love to say."  It draws attention to itself because that second voice is missing, and it musically portrays the lack of a "word of love."

"I Want Her She Wants Me"

The continual repetition of "I want her she wants me" at the end mirrors the cyclical nature of the statement itself.  It just keeps going around.

"Butcher's Tale"

I noticed this earlier, but I've neglected to write about it:  the repetition of the "can't/won't stop shaking" line reflects the inability to cease.

A new thing I noticed though is the rhyme scheme of the first verse, which is different from all the others.  The first verse has ABAB ("trade," "fee," "stayed," "see") where the others are ABCB.  So as the speaker/singer looks back on his past life ("A butcher, yes, that was my trade...") things have a stronger coherence than they do once he goes to war.

"Friends of Mine"

I'd previously noted the parallelism in "That's something to see; that's nothing to hide," but I noticed a new one in the chorus:  "And they've got something it's so hard to find" parallels with "And they've got something you don't often find."  It's not as strictly parallel as some other instances, but it's pretty close.

—Bonus Tracks—
"I'll Call You Mine"

I've been meaning to mention this since 19 April:  although "I'll Call You Mine" is a bonus track, it works really well sequenced after "Time of the Season" (as it is on one of the Odessey and Oracle CD re-issues I have) because they're in relative keys.  "Time of the Season" is in E minor, and "I'll Call You Mine" is (at least mostly) in G major.

I did notice a new thing too.  During this section:

I couldn't chance to break the spell we had
The happy times we had, and yet the times were sad
Just for me, baby, you understood then
I was afraid to try to call you mine

Blunstone is singing the lead vocal, and Argent is doing the harmony vocal.  But Argent's harmony vocal drops out for the third line.  So there's only one voice (Blunstone's) singing "Just for me...."  It emphasizes the exclusivity.

"Don't Cry for Me"

An-other thing I've neglected to write about:  the "down" in the lines "Don't break your heart / Thinking you have let me down" is broken into syllables (a melisma), and the later notes are lower in pitch, so the word itself is going down.

"Smokey Day"

Like the "tight" in "Brief Candles," there are words here that could be either adjectives or flat adverbs:  "Soft, serene, she dances" or "Soft[ly], serene[ly] she dances."

"She Loves the Way They Love Her"

Surely I must have noticed this before, but I don't think I've written about it:  in the first line of the third verse, there's a multitude of internally-rhyming words:  "Crying, dying, sighing, whining, shining in the microphone."

"Maybe after He's Gone"

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Back in late April/early May, I noticed a few things about "Maybe after He's Gone," and I'm finally getting around to writing about them (after this post has already been sitting in my drafts for almost three weeks).

I'm pretty sure that I've previously noted the descending chromatic phrase in the backing vocals during the choruses.  After reading some of the Wikipedia article on lament bass, I'm not sure if it perfectly applies here, but as a chromatic descending phrase, it does provide an impression of sadness, which gives a melancholic edge to the lyrics.  That descending chromatic figure questions the hope in "Maybe after he's gone / She'll come back / Love me again."

I'm fairly sure that the verses are in E minor and the choruses in A major.  So that descending chromatic figure works against the lyrics, but also against the relative happiness of A major (compared to E minor, which - as a minor key - is usually perceived as sad).

Yet there are also an ascending chromatic phrase in the piano part during the choruses (after "Love me again"), which I don't know how to reconcile.  Maybe there's a conflict between optimism (characterized by that ascending chromatic phrase on piano) and pessimism (characterized by the descending chromatic phrase in the backing vocals).

Incidentally, those ascending chromatic phrases are almost identical to those in Argent's "Christmas for the Free."  "Maybe after He's Gone" has A B C C#, and "Christmas for the Free" has A B C C# D (of course, the A isn't part of the chromaticism, but it's in both phrases).  The rhythms are different, but the notes are the same.

"Maybe after He's Gone"

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I was thinking about "Maybe after He's Gone" this morning, specifically the third verse.  At first, I just realized that after the line "I'm alone," most of the instruments drop out so that the song is nearly a cappella (there's still a piano part).  The voices are (almost) alone, just like the singer/speaker.

I looked at my transcription though, and - after I fixed my line breaks - I realized two other things:

First, the sentiments "I'm on my own" and "I'm alone" are illustrated in how the verse is a line shorter than the others.  There's a lack in both instances.

Secondly, those full lines are pretty parallel:  "I feel so cold; I'm on my own" and "Night surrounds me; I'm alone."  The similarity of those lines tacitly indicates that the night is cold.

"Maybe after He's Gone"

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I played through parts of "Maybe after He's Gone" last night, and I later realized that there's more to the line "her smile, her tears are part of me."  I initially noticed this in January, but I didn't explain it that well.  Back, then, I noticed that the melody for "her smile" goes up (G to C) and the melody for "her tears" goes down (G to E).  So then I realized that the happy element has a rising melody, and the sad one has a falling melody.

But last night, after playing through it again, I noticed that there's also a sort of resemblance as far as shape goes.  The corners of the mouth move up when it smiles, just like the rising melody from G to C.  And tears fall from the eyes, just as the melody falls from G to E (which - incidentally - I think is a minor third, which helps to emphasize that sadness, since minor keys and intervals are often perceived as sad).

"Maybe after He's Gone"

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For whatever reason, I got to thinking about "One Day I'll Say Goodbye" this morning.  It's one of those songs that I learned parts of so long ago that I don't really remember it anymore (although I do still remember [most of] the bass part!).  In any case, I remembered that the liner notes to Zombie Heaven mentioned something in common between "One Day I'll Say Goodbye" and "Maybe after He's Gone" ("'One Day I'll Say Goodbye' provided the basis for 'Maybe after He's Gone'").  I'd never really understood how, but I realized this morning that it's the melody.  The melody of the verses in "One Day I'll Say Goodbye" is fairly similar to the melody of the choruses in "Maybe after He's Gone" ("One Day I'll Say Goodbye" is half a step lower though).

That got me thinking about "Maybe after He's Gone," which reminded me that it's one of the two songs from Odessey and Oracle that I still need to learn the bass part to.  So, I spent some time on it, and I think I've figured it out.

This certainly isn't the best recording I've ever made, but the bass part was the thing I was focused on.  I didn't even double the acoustic guitar part with electric guitar.

So now, the only bass part I have left to learn is that of "Friends of Mine" (plus that little part in "Hung up on a Dream").

Rain Imagery

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I was still thinking about the rain images in Zombies songs, and - in a supreme coincidence - I was playing "Maybe after He's Gone" on electric piano while it was raining outside, which reminded me of "She told me she loved me / With words as soft as morning rain."

I sort of remembered a rain image in Argent's "Pleasure," but I had to look that up to confirm it ("My love is full of pleasure / Falling rain to cool my aching face").  Since I've been transcribing the lyrics, I can just do a search for "rain."  There are some more references on the later albums (like Out of the Shadows and As Far as I Can See), but the only other one I'll mention is from "Keep on Rollin'" - "Move just like a river / Fall like the morning rain."  Like "Maybe after He's Gone," that's even morning rain, specifically.

"Maybe after He's Gone" and "Beechwood Park"

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A few days ago, I remembered something about "Maybe after He's Gone" and "Beechwood Park" that I'd neglected to write about.

After I figured out the vocal melody in "Maybe after He's Gone," I realized that - combined with the chromatic phrase in the backing vocals - it sort of forms a Bsus4.  The "gone" in the lead vocals is on a B, and the backing vocals go from an E to a Db, so it's like going from Bsus4 to B major, just without the F#.  (Since Blunstone has such a high voice, that B might be above the E and Db, in which case it's just an inversion.)

That same chord change - Bsus4 to B major - is in the guitar part in "Beechwood Park."  It roughly corresponds to the "lanes" in the line "When all the air was damp and warm in the green of country lanes."

It's a pretty minor element to be comparing, but both "Maybe after He's Gone" and "Beechwood Park" are Chris White songs (incidentally to-day's his birthday) and they're sequential songs on the album, so while it might be minor, I don't think it's insignificant.

Journey

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Colin Blunstone's Journey was released in the UK to-day in 1974, so I listened to it.  (I've started doing this thing where I listen to the albums on their release dates in order to become more familiar with them.  Otherwise, I don't listen to some that often.)  In listening to it, I found a lot of interesting things.

I talked about some of the structure of "Wonderful" back in November, but I found two more things.  First, the progression between two lines in iterations of the bridge (possibly not really a bridge; I don't know how to classify it).  "I need you more than ever now, my love" becomes "I want you more than ever now, my love."  Interestingly, this same sort of thing is in a line from "Shadow of a Doubt" - "You're the very last thing I want; the first thing that I need."

Second - and not as interesting - there's also alliteration in the line "High in the hall."

There's a slight lyrical resemblance between "Beginning" and "Maybe after He's Gone."  "Beginning" has the line "Oh, self-doubt surrounds you in the night," and "Maybe after He's Gone" has "Night surrounds me."  I'm not sure, but the line "Let us begin by beginning" might also reference the Zombies' album Begin Here.

"Keep the Curtains Closed Today" contains some typical Zombie themes of home and crying.  There are the lines "Could this be just the start of coming home" and "Just wish you well and hope that we don't cry."

"Beware" also mentions typical themes of dreams, memories, and crying (tears):

So hard to be alone with these forgotten dreams
No bitterness could drive away the tears
No other one will take the place you have inside
I know the memories will last a million years

According to Russo's Collector's Guide, "Beware" was written by Argent and White (they also wrote "Wonderful").

I think it's also interesting that both iterations in the chorus of "Beware" have a word that doesn't fit into the rhyme scheme.  The first iteration:

Beware as you wander through the years
Beware that you keep your heart from fears
Take care, my love, to share your love
And though the road's been long
I'll say goodbye, and I was wrong
And I've been lovin' you too long
But now I love you more than ever so beware

And the second iteration:

Beware and I know your heart can sing
Beware for I wish your everything
Take care, my love, to share your love
And though the road's been long
I'll say goodbye, and I was wrong
And I've been lovin' you too long
But now I love you more than ever so beware, my love

In both, "your love" doesn't really fit with the pattern.  There's "years," "fears," the outlier "love," and then "long," "wrong," and "long."  The second iteration keeps the last three but switches the first group to "sing," "everything," and - again - the outlier "love."  It seems like it should be two groups of three and then the final line, but - perhaps significantly - the love doesn't cooperate.

"It's Magical" and "You Who Are Lonely" both contain lines about dreams.  "It's Magical" has "And when I go to sleep / All the dreams of you are mine to keep," but the dream reference in "You Who Are Lonely" is much more interesting.  The complete verse:

And a home without love
Is no home at all
I'm hanging on to a dream
Waiting to fall

There's the bit about home common to Zombies songs, but the line with the dream has "hanging on to," which immediately brought the Zombies' "Hung up on a Dream" to mind.  The last two verses of "Hung up on a Dream" seem to describe what the speaker/singer in "You Who Are Lonely" has lost:

They spoke with soft, persuading words
About a living creed of gentle love
And turned me on to sounds unheard
And showed me strangest, clouded sights above 

Which gentled touched my aching mind
And soothed the wanderings of my troubled brain
Sometimes I think I'll never find
Such purity and peace of mind again

Like the "love" in "Beware," "You Who Are Lonely" seems to have a significant inconsistency in that there's a line missing in the choruses:

You, you who are lonely know
How slowly time can go
When winds of sadness blow 

You, you who are lonely see
To be alone is not to be free
Nobody knows like me
And you who are lonely

There isn't a line to complete the first quatrain, as if to mirror the speaker/singer's lack of companionship.

"Maybe after He's Gone"

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As a sort of recompense for having neglected "Maybe after He's Gone" for so long, I've been looking into it some more.  I learned the rest of the melody for the vocals (I think I've done this for only "Maybe after He's Gone" and "The Way I Feel Inside," but I should really do this for other songs too), and in doing so, I found some interesting things.

The melody during "her smile, her tears" first goes up (G to C) to portray the smile and then down (G to E) to portray the tears.  Interestingly, the "her" is on a G note both times, and I think that that consistency makes this work even better - both descriptions have the same starting note, so the difference between them is… well, somewhat easier to notice.

In the third verse, the melody is slightly different.  The melody that accompanies the lines "As the night folds in around me / Night surrounds me; I'm alone" is more compact than the corresponding section in earlier verses.  The phrase as it appears in that verse contains notes between C and A, but in the other verses, it's between C and the C above (an octave).  The shortened span of the melody kind of imparts "the night fold[ing] in" and "surround[ing]."

At the end of each verse, the melody rises from a G to a G# (the minor third to what's either an accidental or - more likely - a note in some other key), which has some interesting connections to the lyrics.  It's a weird-sounding change, and each of the lines that accompanies it deals with the alienation and loneliness present in the wake of the girl's departure.  There's "Turned to shadow when he came," "I feel life's gone from me," and "Night surrounds me; I'm alone."

I'm not even going to try to suss out the music theory behind that change because it's over my head.  "Maybe after He's Gone" is - at least mostly - in E minor (I think the choruses are in A major), but I'm fairly certain that that G-to-G# change doesn't indicate a modulation to E major (usually, I think it would), but beyond that….