There’s something about Matt Berninger’s mournful, melancholic baritone that gets me every time. His voice, and his way with words, and his gift for melody.

It’s why I love his band The National; it’s why I’m enjoying his second solo album Get Sunk; and why I went to see him perform it at the Union Chapel a few weeks ago.

I was drawn to this track – Bonnet Of Pins – by its unusual title; not unusual for Berninger, whose previous song titles include Tropic Morning News, The System Only Dreams In Total Darkness and (a particular favourite) New Order T-Shirt.

It turns out the title, if not the song itself, was inspired by an exhibition Berninger saw of pioneer bonnets covered in thousands of steel, pearl-tipped corsage pins by the sculptor Angela Ellsworth, the 35 headpieces representing the 35 wives of Mormon founder Joseph Smith – and reimagining them with their own visionary and revelatory powers.

Yes, I’m looking this up; obviously.

Berninger’s song is, as with all his songwriting, cryptic in the extreme: this is a man who once sang, in the already cryptically titled Lemonworld: “Lay me on the table, put flowers in my mouth / And we can say that we invented a summer lovin’ torture party.”

Bonnet Of Pins seems to be about an encounter with an old flame, prompting a flood of emotions and memories: some welcome, others less so, as past intimacies flash through their minds.

They realise they miss each other. But now they have their own lives, and after this chance meeting (“a cup trick shell… a puff of smoke”) they may never see each other again. And that’s fine.

That, at least, is how it comes across to me. I could be hopelessly wrong. But I love it.