“Eulogy”

“Eulogy” is the shortest song on Strawberry Alarm Clock’s 1968 album The World In A Sea Shell, and it’s one of the album’s more daring sonic sculptures.

It has a mid-tempo pace, an opaque sheen to the vocal chorale, and some striking tonal dissonance in its sneaky chord changes. A fat, distorted electric guitar line is a main feature of the backing track, as is often the case with SAC songs.

The lyrics seem at first to address an unfortunate love triangle but are eventually revealed to be an unusual Oedipal letter to departed parents. Here, the son (singing the song) is jealous of his mom’s attention to his father. But the father dies and the son sees, in her grief, the strength that had defined the bond between his parents. The mother is evidently gone too, as suggested by the song’s final lines:

“Mom and dad
How I miss you both”

Not many more details than that are apparent. It is, after all, the album’s shortest song at just under two minutes.

The strange dissonance of “Eulogy”

The song’s poetry is interesting and certainly out of the ordinary, in a SAC kind of way. But the real thing worth noticing in “Eulogy” (besides the great electric guitar) is the strange off-key ringing throughout the verses. For most of the chord changes, a keyboard tone sounds a single note, but it isn’t always in harmony with the actual chord — just out of reach, in fact.

It’s the kind of mistake-on-purpose that bands don’t turn to often enough. A little dissonance is a good thing when used effectively, which it is here.

Otherwise, “Eulogy” recalls some of the bolder experiments on Wake Up… It’s Tomorrow (1968), not surprising as drummer Randy Seol co-wrote the song. A self-consciously psychedelic mix of crazy ideas, “Eulogy” is deceptively simple upon first listen. Even as it ends – with a disorienting warbling sound effect that leads directly into the album’s last song, “Shallow Impressions”.

“Eulogy” appears on…

The World In A Sea Shell (1968)