Parting is such sweet sorrow for Seattle baseball fans when it comes to saying goodbye to 11-year Mariner Ichiro Suzuki—though perhaps, not as sorrowful as it would have been a couple years ago when he was still an All-Star caliber player. Nonetheless, Death Cab for Cutie frontman, ex-Mr. Zooey Descahnel and longtime Mariner devotee Ben Gibbard was moved enough by last night’s trade of Ichiro, to the hated New York Yankees for some middling prospects, that he decided to unleash his musical tribute to the great of Northwest baseball, appropriately titled “Ichiro’s Theme.”
In a pleasant surprise, the song is far more than a tossed off demo, but rather one of the catchier, more delectable songs Gibbard has been responsible for in recent years. An old school power-pop sort of number, with a healthy early Beatles influence as well, the song one-ups even the Baseball Project in its simple pleasures of good songwriting and obvious baseball superfandom. Filled with descriptive gushings over Ichiro’s baseball prowess—”When he steal second, he don’t say please,” “When he’s at the plate with the game on the line / The fans, they know he’ll win it every time”—the song comes together with the instantly memorable chorus “Go, go, go Ichiro / Rounding third and heading for home.”
And to think: If Gibbard had unveiled this song a couple years earlier, maybe Ichiro would’ve been inspired enough to keep his performance up and his team in contention, and he never would’ve had to be traded to the big bad bullies of the American League. Ben’s probably breaking his horn-rimmed glasses in frustration as we speak.
The post Ben Gibbard Pays Tribute to Ichiro Suzuki the Only Way He Knows How appeared first on Popdust.
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