Accusations

"Accusations" shows the value of changing things up to keep a song interesting. In this case it's a radical shift in tempo. The song starts as a greasy little rocker that wouldn't stand out among the many other such Robert Pollard/Todd Tobias collaborations. After the more frantic first verse it slips into a plodding 4/4 beat over which Pollard sings "Dead I ain't little girl/ but last night I was alone."

Where the first verse seems to set up something that isn't delivered -- "they die around you and yet they come alive," Pollard sings -- the second is brief. He urges, "try it out, don't wait, feel it, you'll know." The tempo shifts again, dropping into that bluesy stomp, over which he sings the clever, "Making accusations, in the accustations."

As the song clatters to a close, Pollard fires one last salvo, singing, "A kiss will see it now, for generations my love, my heart."

All of this surely means something. Is it a kiss off to a lover? Political commentary (given a reference in he second chorus to "the backward nations"? Something else? Who's to say.