The next two tracks—“I’ve Been Waiting” (more on that later) and “Girlfriend,” the breakthrough single, which puts the power in power pop and features Quine’s blistering guitar—take over where “Divine...

“If this was the Middle Ages, I'd be shunned.” “Shunned because you had meniscus surgery?” She forgets how funny he was when he got high.  She stops at the light and turns her head. His left leg, swaddled in a cocoon of cotton padding secured with an Ace bandage, stretches across the back seat.  “Without modern medicine I’d be a dead man limping, cast off to the outskirts, forced to rely on the charity of the few benevolent souls who took pity on me.” He scratches under the dressing with the business end of an ice scraper. “Who knows what would happen with the kids? You'd be forced to sell your body so we could eat.” “We’d definitely starve.” She hits the blinker, decides not to needle him this time about how they’d get along fine without his pin money. “How much Percocet did they give you?”  “Enough to make me feel goooood.” He titters, a high-pitched giggle she hasn’t heard in years, maybe since when the kids were in training pants. “Listen.” He pushes himself up on his elbows. “You’d have men crawling over each other to get with you. I’d be first in line. I’m sherioush.” “I know you are, honey.” She’s banished him to the guest room for less. But she smiles, all teeth, in the rearview mirror. “That’s really sweet.”  The light changes. She turns off the blinker, hits the gas. “Why didn’t you turn?”  “The kids won’t be home for another hour. Let’s take a drive.”  Her eyes catch his in the rearview mirror. His face erupts with the lopsided grin of a five-year-old; he waves as if noticing her for the first time.  “Lie back and relax, goofball. And tell me all about our life as medieval outcasts.”     --- Jim Parisi is a freshly unemployed editor who lives in Washington, D.C., with his long-suffering wife and their sweet but highly reactive boxer-pitbull mix. He has published personal essays about music for ihavethatonvinyl.com.  

Federal workers can become the standard bearers of the Democratic opposition.