The entirety of my first radio show, an hour long I believe, was made up of Elephant 6 artists. I’ve seen a dozen or more shows with Elephant 6 bands in a few short years. I was quite obsessed, not with all the bands in the collective, but a lot of them. In all the time and all the songs, the single song with which I have possibly been most obsessed is possibly also the most ridiculously named.

I’ve called this the perfect pop song. It’s short but feels complete. It’s fun and makes you smile, but it’s about yearning and, one of the most common topics of pop songs, the sacrifices one would make for love.

It’s also just about the perfect Beulah song: great instrumentation and orchestration, starting with the trumpet in the beginning. The Victorian-style piano solo is an obvious reference to the Beatles’ “In My Life” (listen here), but just makes me like the song more. It’s like a great jazz solo that quotes “Straight No Chaser”; the reference is clever rather than derivative.

Still, this does not fully explain why I was obsessed with this song for months at a time. Perhaps listening to this song will clarify things.

Beulah – If We Can Land a Man on the Moon, Surely I Can Win Your Heart (mp3)

The excellent When Your Heartstrings Break can be purchased from insound.

This entry was posted on Sunday, October 12th, 2008 at 10:12 pm Posted by adrian in SF bay area, mp3s, radio, song obsessions. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.