a song I like – jayson edition

Your picture is still on my wall

Because writing randomly about one song is fun. The song I am choosing today is “Some Things Last A Long Time,” by Beach House.

This song is originally by Daniel Johnston, who I have an arm’s-length familiarity with (know of the movie, haven’t seen it, familiar with the mythology, haven’t listened much), but it feels more and more to me like some sort of indie hymn. The song, with its gently inclusive, diffidently optimistic spirit (SOME things last a long time,implying, of course, that most don’t — which only makes those few things that much more precious), has been passed around like a little secret from band to band. Doug Martsch did a version with Built to Spill that draped long, stringy guitar lines all over song’s bare two-chord framework like streamers; Doug’s high, little voice was a dead ringer for Daniel Johnston’s, and captured his earnest, boyish optimism. It also devolved into a deeply unnecessary bout of eye-glazing sloppy guitar heroics. C’est la vie; with Built to Spill, it comes with the territory.

This version, though, the Beach House version, is the version that I return to over and over again. The way the opening synth line, just a buzzing noise, in essence, gently elides into the chiming guitars, which reconfigure the simple two chords into an elegant little figure, the way the singer transforms the repetition of “my wall” into a cascading vocal run — most of all, the way the song trails off a little over two minutes in, leaving you behind and taking whatever tantalizing secrets it is holding with it — all of this has lodged the song in the deep part of my subconsciousness, the place where you are constantly reliving all of your memories at once and need a song to soundtrack it.

Also, the lyric is simple and crushingly beautiful. I am getting married in a year; I want this song to be a part of that event.