"Seed Toss" has so many great riffs in it. At the beginning its that plinky "plink plink plink plink" played over a slightly sad sounding (but totally rocking!) riff. And the chorus has the same power chord based chunky pop clunk that the verses of "Cast Iron" have (and shows up a lot on "No Pocky for Kitty" as a rule). DUNK DUNKA DUNK DUNKA DUNK DUNKA DUNK DUNKA DAAAH DA DA DA DAAAH! The move from the moody verse to the really really popped out chorus is a great bit of tension building and release, which you know is, like, cool. Also: totally awesome drums on the chorus here.
Lets talk about the plinky plinky for a second: the notes of the plinky plinky are a kind of inverted version of the Superchunk chord featured in "Cool" and "Slack". That chord's made by dropping the root note of a power chord by a fret. The plinky plinky is basically the same power chord but with the HIGH octave dropped a fret. It's got the same sort of marginally dissonant feel as the Superchunk chord, but is more up front here. SLIGHTLY SCREWY CHORDS are one of Superchunk's big songwriting techniques and I like to make note of them when I can!
Generally I don't really like analyzing lyrics to these songs in detail, because I feel like that's done a lot ("Laughter Guns!"). But this song is sort of an exception! The lyrics in this song are (largely) comprehensible and aggressive in an hilariously lame way! It starts with a threat! And such a threat it is! "I'll put a stick in your spokes!" So great: he's pissed, but he's a wimp, but he'll show you AND your bike! Its all "you better" this and "you better" that. He's really telling someone off. That's the verse, right? And then in the chorus the target of his animosity gets pissed and their mood ring registers disapproval or something and some seeds get thrown! What!?!? Who knows? I particularly love how the second verse begins with "You better memorize this face!" which is like the third line in the first verse...like he's picking up where he left off. He says "this coffee's a little too strong" and overall that's what the lyrics make me think of, a highly caffeinated nerd spouting off at someone but without any real ability to show anger. Like, he starts off the second verse still with the "you betters" stuff and gets off track talking about all sorts of other stuff...which he openly admits! He guesses he's running! Also: I do like how the line "here you come on your broom" tells you that he really thinks the target is a witch! Spooky! This is one of my favorite songs ever and I've listened to it like 10000000 times and I still don't know what the line immediately before "the picture's already drawn!" is!
Okay, let me also point out another two AMAZING things in this song that really elevate it. The first occurs in the second verse: the guitar solo over the lyrics, in addition to the rhythm part and the plinky plink. The narrator of the song is getter more and more agitated in the lyrics and this little buzzing bee of a guitar line start floating around in the background and the whole gestalt gives a pretty wound up frustrated feel. Such a detail! Likewise, after the chill out and JUST BE bridge, in the third chorus there's another guitar or two thrown in, one playing a busy bee guitar part like in the verse and the other playing really fast rising octave thingys. You know, like the JUST BE part didn't really help get the band chilled out and they come back at you even harder than before! Strangely, both extra guitars in the last verse drop out halfway through! Why? Who knows!
Song structure: ABABCBD
(D is the "tag" at the end of the chorus" played kind of over and over!)
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