Day 20 - "Calamity Song" by The Decemberists (2011)

 

David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest is a deeply weird novel. Set in an America in which much of the nation has become a dump for toxic waste and corporations buy the naming rights for years (“The year of the Depend Adult Undergarment” provides the temporal frame for the book), the novel is a darkly humorous dystopia in which various characters seek the Infinite Jest, a film so entertaining that those who have viewed it lose all will to live when they return to reality - its creator having committed suicide by microwaving his own head.

The Decemberists’ breakthrough hit, the 2011 “Calamity Song”, is both a meditation on the themes of the novel and an exploration of the wider American fascination with the apocalyptic. The song’s invocation of Wallace's book are clear in its references to “The year of the chewable Ambien tab” and the video, in which a group of teenagers play the fictional game of “Eschaton” – a tennis based take on nuclear warfare which features prominently in Infinite Jest.

Yet the concerns with apocalyptic (which are, to some extent, there in the book) resurface throughout the lyrics, which were penned during the 2008 election.  “When I was writing it”, explained singer Colin Meloy in a 2011 interview, “Sarah Palin was talking about how everybody was going to move to Alaska when the end times come”. Palin herself is imagined as the “Dowager Empress”, with John McCain reduced to the “Panamian child” (he was born on an air base in the country). With Pete Buck playing along on the 12 string, the song has a lot of fun lampooning Palin, comparing her unfavourably to the notorious early twentieth-century miser Hetty Green – who was reputed never to wash to save money on soap.

Where apocalyptic thought was welcomed by individuals like Palin, the song openly attempts to display the horrific effects of the desire for the end (We heaved relief/As scores of innocents died). This makes the imagined society of the future even more interesting. Is this real? A take on the novel? Or an attack on the possibility of any society whatsoever post-apocalypse? With only one day left to the Mayan prophecy, we won’t have too long left to find out…

Calamity Song (Meloy, 2011)

Had a dream
You and me and the war at the end times
And I believe
California succumbed to the fault line
We heaved relief
As scores of innocents died

And the Andalusian tribes
Setting the lay of Nebraska alight
Till all the remains is the arms of the angel

Hetty Green
Queen of supply-side bonhomie bone-drab
If you know what I mean
On the road
It's well-advised to follow your own path
In the year of the chewable Ambien tab

And the Panamanian child
Stands at the Dowager Empress's side
And all the remains is the arms of the angel
And all the remains is the arms of the angels

And you've receded into loam
And they're picking at your bones
Will call cold
We'll come home

Quiet now
Will we gather to conjure the rain down
Will we now
Build a civilization below ground
And I'll be crowned
The community kicked it around

And the Andalusian tribes
Setting the lay of Nebraska alight
'Til all the remains is the arms of the angel
'Til all the remains is the arms of the angels

Listen on Spotify: Apopalypse: Apocalyptic Advent Calendar

Buy: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Calamity-Song/dp/B004H0CHZK/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1355953412&s=dmusic&sr=1-1