I have two rules about places that I work. The first is that I have to able to see the sky. If there isn’t a window, then I’m not taking the job. This comes from a few dark winters spent in windowless offices, wishing that the ceiling would collapse and either crush me to death or give me an excuse to go home. Or at least to a hospital with windows.

The other rule is that I have to be able to listen to music. One of the places that I work now plays music, which can be dicey, but they place pretty decent music. Lately “Echo Beach” by Martha and the Muffins has been on rotation, and every time that I hear it, I think about it how it might be one of the few perfect pop songs.

Qualities to support this argument:

• The lyrics are in the sweet spot between naming a specific feeling but also being vague enough that you can read your own experience into them
• It’s a song about being bored at a job but fantasizing about being at a mystical beach
• I’ve often listened to it while bored a job and fantasizing about whatever the fuck Echo Beach is
• Is it in LA?
• No, this band is from Toronto
• Echo Beach must be a state of mind
• But I always imagine it being LA-adjacent
• Or at least on the West Coast
• One time I was at a happy hour at a weird bar in Austin, and there was a table of women all dressed in vintage office clothes, just getting out of their office jobs, where they all clearly cosplayed as office workers of a past decade (probably the same decade as the song Echo Beach), fetishizing both the glamour and the boredom of office work, and all I could think about was Echo Beach
• The intro to the song is about ten miles long and it’s so fast paced that I can’t help starting to dance when I hear it
• “A building in the distance / Surrealistic sight” is such a stupid wonderful lyric
• Sweet dramatic saxophone solo, especially in the outro
• “Echo Beach, far away in time” feels incredibly poignant to me
• Echo Beach is in both the past (experience) and the future (desire)
• No one has ever actually been to Echo Beach (not real) but we’ve all wanted to go to Echo Beach (fantasy of being wherever isn’t job)
• Echo Beach is the once and future beach of all of our dreams

Great job, Martha and the Muffins.