Liner Notes

• Manifest - Andrew Bird
  “I’m starting to question my manifest destiny/ My claim to this frontier,” Andrew Bird sings, violin behind him, and I think about the A Beka and Bob Jones history textbooks used by so many homeschoolers in the 1980s and 1990s, how they taught us that God’s dream for the world was for white protestants to rule it. It’s no wonder we’re now at “the brink of a great disaster” and it’s no wonder that we are still pretending we “can’t hear.” But this world is not mine to own or rule.
  

• Goners - Laura Gibson
  Her voice is so light, so unconcerned, at what she sees, as if she’s moved beyond despair to acceptance, and maybe that’s why I love this song. “Here comes the end, of the future” — we’re not at the end of days yet, just at the end of the certainty that there will always be more days, that there is a future we can work towards. How should we then live?

• Plan D - Bill Fay
  This song was written in the 1970s, a fact that never fails to astonish me, because it feels so current. And maybe it’s the answer to Laura Gibson. The seas may be rising. We may be in the sixth great extinction. Humans may or may not survive. And we’re in on it. We were born, we’ve used more than our share — we’ve used rather than loved created things. But we were born!
  “And is that not some cause
  For worship, being born among these trees?
  Though the beast is lurking.”
  

• Mercy Mercy Me - Marvin Gaye
  In “Lament,” I tell a story about snorkeling in waters where oil is leaking from tankers into the ocean. If we do not loudly lament such a thing, how will we ever move the powers and principalities who benefit from it to make a change?
  
  What we love is revealed in what we lament.
  
  “Whoa, ah, mercy mercy me
  Oh things ain't what they used to be, no no
  Where did all the blue skies go?
  Poison is the wind that blows from the north and south and east”
  

• How It Ends - DeVotchKa
  By all accounts, this is a hopeful song, right? It’s about death, yes, but it’s about the certainty that our faith is not in vain — that we know what happens after death, and we know “there's a place in the sun/ For all that you've done.”
  But then:
  
  “And in your soul
  They poked a million holes
  But you never let them show
  Come on, it's time to go”
  
  And all I can picture is something DeVotchKa probably never meant; I see the people who were abused by false doctrine, bullied by false “virtues,” who suffered a million tiny hurts stoically, and who have, in the last few years, said “it’s time to go,” and left behind that abusive, false religion. I want them to find a place in the sun.
  

• Sleeping Volcanoes - Cass McCombs
  So maybe everything hidden is about to be revealed and it will bring about the end of days — the end of our days, anyway. “Help me, Armageddon/Help me to be calm,” Cass McCombs sings, and it seems ridiculous, but —if we’re in “cuckoo land/home of the fake,” then maybe armageddon is a hope — a hope that the fake will be exposed and the real will triumph.
  
  “We're the refugees
  Drifting through your trees
  A shadow never sleeps
  We're all over the world…”
  
  I think there are refugees from bad religion all over the world, young and old. We’re over the abuse and manipulation. And there are more of us than you think. And we will find each other.
  

• Harmony Hall - Vampire Weekend
  “Anybody with a worried mind 
  could never forgive the sight
  of wicked snakes inside a place
  you thought was dignified”
  
  And I cannot forget the sight of wicked snakes speaking in the name of Christ. 
  But I do not pretend that I am somehow better. Power could corrupt me, too.
  

• Bombs Above - Wilco
  It’s far past time to confess our complicity. And “all my life I’ve played a part” in a religion that has gotten so many things wrong, and hurt so many people as a result.
  

• I Will - Radiohead
  “I won’t let this happen to my children.” I won’t let this climate crisis happen to my children (I can’t stop it, but I can act as if it’s stoppable). I won’t let a religion of shame and exclusion and division and self-righteousness and manipulation happen to my children either.
  

• It Was Not Natural - Wye Oak
  “When I am tired
  unbidden I go for a walk
  I have to walk
  Or else I do not recognize myself”
  
  For the last few years, walking has been the best answer to my angst and confusion and sadness. 
  
  “As I expected, 
  with time it hasn’t gotten easier
  I have to work now
  At things that used to be like breathing
  I try to focus
  Forgive myself for having so much
  I am too busy for it
  Or else I am not busy enough”
  

• Farewell Transmission - Songs: Ohia
  If this is the end, this I still believe:
  
  “The real truth about it is no one gets it right
  The real truth about it is we're all supposed to try”
  

• Joga - Bjork
  Who is Bjork singing to — who is the You? What is the “state of emergency”? (And it is orgasmic?) I don’t know, but whatever it means, there is something about being on that edge, that state of emergency, this is beautiful, and I can see even the edge of apocalypse as something beautiful, as a place of climax where truths are revealed and wounds might be healed.
  “How beautiful to be
  State of emergency
  Is where I want to be
  All that no-one sees
  You see
  What's inside of me
  Every nerve that hurts
  You heal”
  

• Another World - Antony and the Johnsons
  “I need another place
  Will there be peace?
  I need another world
  This one's nearly gone”
  
  This earth is nearly gone (so much of it is gone already, so many species disappearing every day). And my place - my evangelical home, the particular expression of faith I grew up in - isn’t my place any longer, either. So much of its goodness is gone, leached out by power-grabbers who took advantage of our desire to be good, who used our sincere devotion as means to their own ends. I need another place. I need another world.
  

• Take on the Dark - Amanda Shires
  If Antony gives us a lament, Amanda gives us a battle song. 
  “Lead with your heart
  but look over your shoulder
  take on the dark…
  it’s ok to fall apart.” 
  
  Be wise as serpents and innocent as doves, and somehow, fight evil without becoming evil yourself. That’s what’s missing. Maybe they thought they could use an evil leader as a tool, as a strongman, without taking on some of his evil themselves. That’s a dangerous proposition.
  

• Prayer in Open D - Phoebe Bridgers
  There’s a “valley of sorrow in my soul… and the rock of ages I have know/ is a weariness down in the bone.”
  
  But there’s also a “highway rising from my dreams…and I have seen it stretching wide, clear across to the other side.” There’s new life from ashes… a way forward. 
  
  And here is the turn in the playlist, from lament and criticism and pain and fight to …another world being possible, being imagined. 
  

• Apocalypse Lullaby - The Wailin’ Jennys
  “Hurricanes will come
  Earthquakes break the walls
  Oceans rise
  Empires fall
  Enter world, light unshown
  Follow heart, follow home
  Here we are, light unshown
  One round heart, one round home”
  

• Circles - Annabel (lee)
  “They’ll see the light about your head
  and recognize instead
  as any fool can see
  what we need 
  is a new world”
  
  Forget the idea of a halo, of sanctimonious virtue on display. That’s not what we need. What we need is a new world.
  

• Get me away from here I'm dying - Belle and Sebastian
  Ok, get me out of this world that mostly cares about success and upward mobility and looking good. Instead, “I’ll settle down with some old story,” and even if it’s true that “you could either be successful or be us,” I’ll choose to be us.
  “Play me a song to set me free…
  I always cry at endings”
  

• Sons and Daughters - The Decemberists
  Finally, I begin to envision the new world. Refugees from everywhere, we’ll forget borders, we’ll be home for each other, and 
  
  “When we arrive sons and daughters
  We'll make our homes on the water
  We'll build our walls of aluminum
  We'll fill our mouths with cinnamon now
  These currents pull us 'cross the border
  Steady your boats arms to shoulder
  'Til tides all pull our hull aground
  Making this calm harbor now home
  Take up your arms sons and daughters
  We will arise from the bunkers…
  
  Hear all the bombs, they fade away”
  

• Tables and Chairs - Andrew Bird
  And in this new world, there will be snacks. No banks, no borders; music and dancing and feasting.
  
  “I know we're gonna meet someday in the crumbled financial institutions of this land
  there will be tables and chairs
  pony rides and dancing bears
  there'll even be a band
  'cause listen after the fall there'll be no more countries
  no currencies at all…
  and that's not all
  there will be snacks, there will
  there will be snacks!
  

• Crowded Table - The Highwomen 
  Everyone is invited to this feast. That’s what goodness looks like in the new world - a crowded table.
  “The door is always open
  Your picture's on my wall
  Everyone's a little broken
  And everyone belongs.”
  

• I got the new world in my view - Sister Gertrude Morgan
  “Get ready for the new world!
  Prepare yourself to live in that holy city!”