The Full Story
About Songs for the End of an Age
Songs for the End of an Age featured the poet Constanza De Giovanni on backing vocals. The album, released in 2023, describes the fall of our civilisation as we slowly sink into a malaise of ecological degradation and political fracture between despairing hate and fear and impossible hope. But out of all this misery, Madadkin somehow manages to twist great doses of his comic touch.
Blast off Superman & Where you Gonna Run?
Songs for the End of an Age Madadkin’s seventh album begins with a seemingly last desperate call (BLAST OFF SUPERMAN) to fix the mess where all in now. The music is satirical and even absurd (aren’t we beyond hope now?), the Übermensch is as much a fantasy as any other Superman or supernatural saviour. And so we slip into the second track: WHERE YOU GONNA RUN? A tired, cracked, wavering voice, over a still ridiculous soundtrack, expressing a hopelessness: with climate disaster collapse is everywhere. There will be no escape.
Fear in a Handful of Dust, Free World, & We Will Be Us Again
The title of the album should actually be Songs for the end of our civilisation, but we decided on the more compact concept of Age for the sake of brevity. Of course, a reference to T.S. Eliot’s Wasteland seemed perfectly fitting for this end of the age mentality and so we recruited the dead poet himself to announce FEAR IN A HANDFUL OF DUST now perfectly jazzy, with a duet between clarinet and bassoon.
The jazz softens into a bluesy acoustic guitar theme, and a dialogue between hope and despair in FREE WORLD, followed by the nostalgic WE WILL BE US AGAIN, lamenting our deception.
Nostalgias:
Talkin' to the Train & The Poet is Dead
Nostalgia perhaps, inspired the resurrection of two old themes from the P.D. Adkin era, and we’ve remixed TALKIN' TO THE TRAIN and THE POET IS DEAD. Nevertheless, both songs capture the End of an Age feelings of despair and a growing decadence, and a decadence that causes growing despair. The Poet is Dead was a song dedicated to Leonard Cohen, written just after his death.
Just got back from Leipzig, Melting Snow, & You Were The Boss
In the middle of the album is JUST GOT BACK FROM LEIPZIG, an exaggeratedly slow basso continuo to accompany a simple and brief eight-line verse that is repeated (and sung) over and over again, seemingly endlessly. This piece represents the heart of the end-of-civilisation theme of the album. Full of a melancholy longing and desperation, it groans on towards the end, much like T.S. Eliot’s Hollow Men, with a whimper.
MELTING SNOW blasts out of the Leipzig minimalism with a Moby inspired, pseudo-dance beat. A resurrection? After the collapse and decadence preceding it, it is certainly a welcome touch of optimism (albeit rather nostalgic).
YOU WERE THE BOSS has a thumping acoustic blues guitar theme that lays a bitter bed for the rasping, acrimonious lyrics to rest in. It’s a song about exploitation and the (future) revenge of the exploited that will come after the collapse.
Avian Flu, I Wanna be a Bird, Thou Shalt Not Have Guns, & Then Came the End
AVIAN FLU is a short jazz interlude, Charlie Parker style (hence the Avian from Birdie), but in a deconstructed, chopped up way with haunting desperate vocal chops.
I WANNA BE A BIRD is an absurd song, built over some staccato dubstep, it sings of a desire to be a bird (harking back to the Superman at the album’s point of departure). In the context, it should be taken as a desire for the need for a trans-humanist evolution.
THOU SHALT NOT HAVE GUNS: thematically this song should have been in the first part of the album, criticising the current plague in our decadent civilisation of gun ownership. It’s a rocky song, quite different to the rest of the album.
The final song, THEN CAME THE END, is an anthem for the end of civilisation. Dramatic, soaring, it is the culminating climax of this album that should not be missed.