The State I Am In

It opens Tigermilk, and a version already existed on Dog on Wheels, the EP of demos recorded on the Beatbox course before the band formed, where it runs 4:58. A Beatbox tutor, Gerry Campbell, played keyboards on that recording. Pitchfork's Marc Hogan heard in it a statement of artistic intent for the band's whole career. The vocal starts alone, then the full band gallops in, and Murdoch sings about 1975 and 1995, a brother's coming-out and a sister's wedding on the same day, and a priest who turns a parishioner's confidences into a trashy novel that shares the song's title. When Murdoch offers himself to God, in Hogan's reading, the Almighty hesitates. The song ends on an oh yeah, the way a prayer ends on amen.

Pitchfork put it at number 17 on its list of the top 200 tracks of the 1990s, and its entry pictured listeners hearing Murdoch tell stories in their ear on a dubbed cassette, introducing a new character or event almost every time the verse melody turns.