Welcome to RedEye’s “Song of the Day,” an ongoing feature where music reporter Josh Terry or another RedEye staff member highlights something they’re listening to. Some days the track will be new, and some days it will be old. No matter what, each offering is something you should check out. Check back every weekday for a new song and subscribe to the Spotify playlist below.
Good songs will define a time in your life; great songs will help define your life. And Beulah’s “Emma Blowgun’s Last Stand,” off of 1999’s “When Your Heartstrings Break,” has been a great song in mine.
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I listened to it on my Walkman with my high school sweetheart, one pair of headphones shared between us. I listened to it while sobbing in parked cars during funerals. I listened to it while jogging on treadmills. While sleeping on sandy dunes and shaky airplanes. Once while dancing to an unusually accommodating DJ ( DJs tend to be accommodating when you’re the only one dancing). It has stuck with me all these years because it’s beautiful and quirky but also melancholy, with a unique but undeniable momentum.
The first half of the five minutes-plus song is an instrumental that fills with horns, keyboards and drums. It’s a bit whimsical without being too saccharine (as some of Beulah’s other tracks can be). Its length gives your mind time to wander and think to its beat. Its epic build feels almost cinematic, the musical equivalent of a zoom in from outer space down upon some Chicagoan stumbling home down a sidewalk at sunrise.
When Miles Kurosky’s lyrics finally come in with “Goodness knows its been a wonderful run,” it’s almost like your own conscience humming the lyrics to you to make you feel better… and you will probably start to.
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