After a number of EPs and years of critical praise, the brainy and baroque Detroit pop crew PAS/CAL is releasing a full-length: I Was Raised on Matthew, Mark, Luke & Laura is out on 7/22 on Le Grand Magistery. A ways back we posted one of its tracks "You Were Too Old For Me." In this week's Drop we premiere "Glorious Ballad Of The Ignored," another gem from the collection. We asked main man Casimer Pascal about the song.

If there was a new Revenge Of The Nerds added to the franchise, this could serve as the grand finale theme. Did personal experience inspire the narrative or were you working within/expanding the general high-school/college alienation genre? Both?
Gosh! I wish this was something I had grown up and out of ... It is seemingly an ever present situation for me. From the classroom to the office the sentiment of that line has served as a trusty defense mechanism of sorts, in that no matter how cruelly I am treated or how bleak the situation I might find myself in is I feel that in the end I will be saved somehow. Thinking about it now I can easily see that it is very much in-line with the sort of lessons I learned from years of parochial school. They taught us that the world is a vulgar and corrupt place, but that we are destined for something better. This lil' secret continues to get me through this mess.

Musically, there's the faked-out intro. How does this work with the theme of the song? It moves from that awkward moment to the flourishing, cohesive outro. For all that, the final words find the protagonist coming to work on Saturday because he has nothing else to do.
Putting it into words seems to cheapen it a bit, but the intro serves as the first "trip up," if you will. From there the song ebbs & flows with the lyric ... sometimes gaining enough footing to be even a bit arrogant -- I am thinking of the bit that asserts, "let us all go home and we'll do something your kids are gonna study in school." Ultimately all this bravado is trumped. The protagonist takes the key to get into work on Saturday, not because he doesn't have anything better to do, but because he can't seem to muster up the nerve to say "no." I think we do this often in life; it is much easier to do the bidding of others than to accomplish our own personal goals -- especially if they are a bit outside the conventional desires.