Synopsis

An animated family man moves through a warped, collage-like version of suburbia, where ordinary scenes and shifting landscapes become visual echoes of anxiety, responsibility, and self-doubt. Paper-cutout figures, marching businessmen, children, roads, houses, and changing environments collide in a deliberately disjointed reality. The video turns the song's worries about parenthood and failure into surreal visual metaphors, contrasting the pressure to appear successful with the private confusion of trying to guide children while still struggling to find confidence himself.

Factoids & Trivia

• The video uses digital animation and imagery inspired by 1950s America, giving it the look of a vintage educational film pulled apart and reassembled.

• Its central concept was to place an archetypal family man inside a disjointed reality. Landscapes and other shifting settings play on the song's repeated idea of being in different "states."

• Lou Barlow said the song grew from his inner dialogue while dropping off and picking up his second-grader from school. He originally considered calling it "Calves of Champions," referring to a fit and successful fellow father he compared himself with.

• Barlow described the song as a realization that his anxious inner dialogue was misleading, along with the need to teach his children to be proud of themselves.

• The video arrived in January 2014, following the release of *Defend Yourself*, Sebadoh's first studio album in 14 years.