With a martial drum beat driving it, one can imagine Guided by Voices marching down the street — be it a gang, an army or a band of zombies afoot — performing the song as part of a relentless journey.
Then the chorus comes in, and it sounds like a jaunty Beatlesque interlude as Robert Pollard sings “This is what we’re tired of” over a bouncing piano chord.
Things flip back and forth, with Pollard singing strange verses about, well, the complaints of a mannequin, one assumes: “Kleptos parading on market floors today/ insider raiding like boys who drink/ and bring down everything/ on top of us.”
That’s when things get truly interesting, for after the second verse, Pollard is joined by a chorus that sounds like a group of soccer fans chanting at the tail end of a match, echoing his complaint in a chant that replaces well-mannered statement with something that blends ennui and menace. Drums and guitars kick in, replacing the whimsy of his solo take with something akin to the fury of the Who’s “Won’t Get Fooled Again.”
The song could fade out here and accomplish all it needs to, but instead, it all drops out to be replaced by the tinkling of a music box. That can’t hold off the rest of the song for long, however, as the guitars and drums (and the declarations of the crowd) swell to overwhelm it.
It’s one of the least-known, most-inventive songs in GBV’s catalog. It was the third B-side of the “Bulldog Skin” single, an outtake from the Mag Earwhig sessions that was at one time considered for an early version of that album when it was to be called Do the Collapse (not to be confused with the later album under that title), according to the Guided by Voices Database. Perhaps its eventual LP home on the Hardcore UFOs boxed set is fitting, for it’s probably too strange for a GBV album but too wonderful to sit unreleased.