All of This and Nothing: Such Great Heights

"All of This and Nothing" 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, Portions For Foxes, or Better Things series. It alternates between Obscure and Famous songs; feel free to argue either way if you're so inclined. See the introduction for more.

This week we're back to Famous, with a song everyone heard two decades ago in the movie The Garden State. (Yes, I saw it: I've lived in New Jersey since 1977, so I was legally obligated.)

It's a cover, though I'm not sure if I ever heard the original, by The Postal Service. Sometimes covers take over for the original - Hendrix did that with All Along the Watchtower.

And Sam Beam, aka Iron & Wine, did it with Such Great Heights.

I don't think I've written about quiet songs much on these Mondays - oh, sure, I talk about songs starting quietly, but I usually go on to talk about the loud parts. This one is all quiet, like a still pond, all focused on one man's voice and guitar.

It's a love song, a mostly happy love song.

Mostly. No true love song can be entirely happy, just like no person is ever entirely happy.

But everything looks perfect from far away

That's the core line of the song for me - this is a good relationship, a happy one, a fulfilling one. But it's not perfect, because nothing is perfect...but it, and the whole world, can look perfect from the right viewpoint.

This is also explicitly a "missing you" song - that's another thing that looks perfect from far away. I don't think that's meant as irony; I believe this is a heartfelt song, both as written and as performed by Beam. But any good song has tensions like that in it - ideas that could undercut themselves, phrases that could be taken different ways.

I'll leave it there: this is a quiet, meditative song, and I don't want to over-egg it. It's something to listen to, quietly, and think about how it reflects, or doesn't, your own life.