In 1976, Mary Leakey was leading a team of palaeontologists in Tanzania’s Oldupai Gorge. The area was well-known for its well-preserved remains of early humans, but this particular trip hadn’t been especially fruitful. To let off some steam one afternoon, a group of palaeontologists started messing around by, um, throwing elephant dung at each other.
Now, I’ve never been a palaeontologist, so I don’t know if the work is frustrating enough to make a person want to bust out and throw elephant turds at co-workers, but I guess every job gets that way from time to time.
Anyway, it was when dung-thrower Andrew Hill ducked to avoid some flying pachyderm poop that something wonderful happened. As he searched the ground for something to throw back he noticed some strange indentations in the dry riverbed where he was standing.
They were footprints, and they were 3.5 million years old.
The dung-throwing stopped abruptly and for the next several months the area was excavated and searched, in the painstaking way that only palaeontologists can search, and the end result was the discovery of the earliest-known evidence of humans deciding to hoist themselves up onto two legs and become bipedal.
I don’t know if the members of British indie outfit alt-J are familiar with that story, but they are probably familiar with its moral.
By 2014, alt-J was making headway, coming off an acclaimed first album, and recording a new one with a full head of steam. Sitting around the studio one day, they started joking around, wondering if they could write, as they would later call it, “the least alt-J song ever.” No elephant dung was involved, to the best of my knowledge, but the result of this messing around was “Left Hand Free” – a song that would become a huge hit, appear on the Captain America soundtrack, and probably earn them more licensing dollars than the rest of their catalogue combined.
“Left Hand Free” may have been the album’s catchy lead single, but “Warm Foothills” is the one that, in my opinion, makes you stop in your 3.5-million-year-old tracks and listen.
What makes this a beautiful song:
1. It starts a bit aimlessly, with no tempo or obvious direction, but ends with surprising momentum.
2. After a first verse filled with imagery of falling and descent, the last line of the second verse ends with an upwards image: “I tie my life to your balloon and let it go.”
3. Collaboration. There are no fewer than 5 vocalists on this track: alt-J’s Joe Newman, Conor Oberst from the band Bright Eyes, Lianne La Havas, Sivu, and Marika Hackman. I can’t think of another song where the vocals bounce between so many singers like this, but it’s great. Like a team gently brushing dirt off a freshly-uncovered set of dinosaur bones.
Recommended listening activity:
Doing something completely unrelated to your work while at work.