go bag and gtfo

In light of increasingly frequent and worrying think pieces on irreversible climate change, buried radioactive materials, and as-of-yet frozen plagues, here is an apocalyptic playlist.

Note: I don’t recommend listening during an apocalyptic event. Pack a go bag and gtfo!

Highlights:

St Vincent - Paris is Burning

This song narrowly edged out “The Apocalypse Song” from the same album. Will news of distant falling cities come by telegram?* It’s not outside the realm of imagination.

Zola Jesus - Exhumed

So goth. So good. Says Danilova on the forthcoming album: “We’re all shackled to something – to life, to death, to bodies, to minds, to illness, to people, to birthright, to duty. Each of us born with a unique debt, and we have until we die to pay it back. Without this cost, what gives us the right to live? And moreover, what gives us the right to die? Are we really even free to choose?”

Sharon Van Etten - The End of the World

Sharon Van Etten covered this Skeeter Davis song for The Man in the High Castle.**

Everything Everything - Get to Heaven

Everything (everything) on this album could be categorized as apocalyptic. “Get to Heaven” describes the average person desensitized to everyday horrors - he passes bodies in the road and wonders where his car is parked. Judging from the number of Facebook friends who shared the infamous photo of a bloodied Syrian child sitting in an ambulance, and then promptly forgot about the conflict two weeks later, this future is not far off.***

Joanna Newsom - Sapokanikan

A tale of Ozymandian excess from Newsom’s fourth album, Divers. Come join me down the rabbit hole of unraveling Joanna Newsom cultural references on twitter @denovocity.

Bonus: Best Videos

Decemberists - Calamity Song

The Decemberists take on DFW’s Infinite Jest, complete with 30-ton tennis ball bombs.

Kate Bush - Experiment IV

Military scientists summon a freaky demon ghost who consumes them all - it’s the least likely path to an apocalypse, but still sp00ky.

*Here’s an excellent piece from The Guardian about the debt music owes to T.S. Eliot

**Speaking of apocalyptic sci-fi: if you haven’t caught Sharon Van Etten portraying a musical wunderkind in Netflix’s The OA, go watch it right now. Perhaps the movements will transport us to a colder planet?

***Overall, the impact of online social justice action proves a mixed bag.