Ball of Wax 62 Songs: Invasion Boys – “Bone Tired”

Taking their name from a line from a Guided By Voices b-side (“Playing tricks on the invasion boys”), I was on their side even before I hit play. Daunting, true, but the song earns my faith. My suspicion is this wasn’t meant to be a commentary on this year but the times in which one first hears a song inevitably colors how one receives it. Like the narrator, I too am Bone Tired. My clothes are being worn through. Insomnia is a constant and when I’m not losing sleep, then I want to sleep all day. We are all waiting on the next mistake (and where it will come from), the next big break (not all big breaks are good), the next go round (if nothing else, 2020 has felt circular). The song structure mirrors how I’m experiencing this 12 months – starting out full of gauzy enthusiasm, thrown into choppy moments of shock that drain the marrow, followed by an unsettling stability that never comforts. And then it just ends. There is not enough energy for even another verse or chorus or even a word. Just a fading away into . . .