One character responds to bad news with childish language in “I Know You’ve Come to Take My Toys Away.”

Track: “I Know You’ve Come to Take My Toys Away”
Album: Nine Black Poppies (1995)

After the quietly bitter “Pure Money” but before the furious “Nine Black Poppies” lies “I Know You’ve Come to Take My Toys Away” on Nine Black Poppies. It’s an angry album, and most of the tracks describe some sort of argument or fury. “I Know You’ve Come to Take My Toys Away” bridges two songs about different versions of the same emotion and has much more fun than either other song.

“I Know You’ve Come to Take My Toys Away” is not a happy song, but it’s very bouncy. You can’t help but snap along with the beat. You find yourself humming or singing along with John Darnielle’s repetitions as Rachel Ware provides backing vocals. The ending “and when it drops // you’re gonna feel it // oh, oh, yeah!” is almost triumphant. It would be fun if it weren’t so ominous.

No one is on the record about “I Know You’ve Come to Take My Toys Away” as far as I can tell. The only live performance in the usual sources comes from a show in Belgium in 1996 where they played the song as it is on the album and offered no additional context. Given the rest of Nine Black Poppies and the opening verse’s mention of “your terrible confession,” we can assume this day did not go well for either character. The sun sets and the argument continues, with the narrator insisting the other character has come for dark purposes.

“Toys” is an odd word choice for the title, though it does successfully make the narrator seem childish. This may be a relationship’s end or it may be other bad news, but we’re left to imbue our own meaning. We just know someone feels slighted and they have a particular way of expressing it.