One-hit-wonder Primitive Radio Gods temporarily took the title for longest pop song title of the 90s with “Standing Outside a Broken Phone Booth with Money In My Hand,” which provided plenty of fodder for plenty of drive-time radio hosts everywhere (and also music writer hacks like myself). But I don’t know if anything ultimately tops Beulah’s endearing “If We Can Land a Man on the Moon, Surely I Can Win Your Heart” for length (one character longer than the Primitive Radio Gods song!) or sentiment (compare and contrast: mundane disappointed slackerdom or uplifting heart-on-sleeve confection?).

As a former member of the Elephant Six collective, Beulah managed to incorporate the instrumental excesses of the loose confederation of musicians better than most bands. Bursting with strings and horns and other acoustic wonders, “If We Can Land a Man on the Moon” is still an accessible pop song whose orchestral flourishes impress without overwhelming the core of the song. “All you need is a pretty song,” Miles Kurosky sings just before the first chorus, and it’s that point where suddenly the song isn’t about a guy trying to win a girl, but a band trying to win its audience. But either way you take it, the song is a sugar-sweet, heartfelt ode, the likes of which used to be all over the indie radar in the late 90s. Maybe now the likes of “If We Can Land a Man on the Moon” would seem a bit quaint, but back then, Kurosky was right—a pretty song was what Beulah had, and a pretty song was all they needed.