(S)mothering and Coaching

After a seemingly incongruous, lo-fi intro that finds Robert Pollard singing "make them go away" to an acoustic guitar, the true song kicks in, sounding like a Who's Next outtake. Pollard sings in his best damaged Roger Daltrey, "There and always shopping, never think to stopping us when they meet us down the road." This is done to a quiet guitar line from Doug Gillard. Then the band joins, thrusting the song into new territory as Pollard sings:

You tear your childhood down from the cheekbone
You sell me down when you tell me you'll never
Spend days unfazed not to tell me, "I love you"

It has all the trappings of a Pete Townsend song about troubled childhood. It becomes clear that the intro is a child telling a parent to make someone go away, or perhaps an admonition to the parents themselves to go away. The verses and chorus then are a sort of response from the parents to the child, never more directly than in that chorus above.

By then end of this three-minute rock opera wannabe, the parents are asking the child not to leave, bringing the story full circle:

Baby don't go
We'll miss you so much
This is your home
Baby don't go

It has all of the tortured storytelling of a Townsend composition, and plenty of dynamic shifts. Yet it feels incomplete, the hook almost a second thought. As part of a larger story, it might work (as with some of the lesser, bridging tracks on Tommy, for example), but standing alone, it lacks something to make it fully cohere.