"Better Things" is a series of weekly posts, each about one song I really love, by an artist I haven't featured in the previous This Year or Portions For Foxes series. See the introduction for more.
OK - nothing against Grave Dancers Union. It's probably the most consistent record in Soul Asylum's career, with four songs that would be on any band's lifetime list. (Runaway Train, of course, Somebody To Shove, Without a Trace and 99%.) It is an awesome record.
But before they hit that, they were scrappier and a bit quirkier - Hang Time and And the Horse They Rode In On aren't as consistent (there are a couple of real clunkers), but We 3 and Gullible's Travels are two of the greatest heartfelt hard-rock songs ever. And their first song to get major national airplay - the one I want to celebrate today - is even more anthemic than that.
Sometime to Return is an almost Platonically perfect Midwest rock song, three and a half minutes of guitars and drums and propulsive force It's a song about that moment before you make it, when you think you might not make it, when you wonder what's going on and what you should be doing.
If someday comes early
Comes whipping comes whirling
To take you for all you have learned
The tables are turning
My bridges are burning
My destination sometime to return
And how do you deal with it?
Get up and do something
No time to choose it
Do it do it do it do it
That's how. This is a great song from a band on the cusp of something awesome, just reaching out to grab it and getting their first taste of that lightning.
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