Song Of The Earth

Impermanence and the troubling certainty of change underlie Song of the Earth. David Longstreth’s genre-crossing cycle of two dozen songs weaves references to Gustav Mahler’s symphonic song-cycle Das Lied von der Erde, the nature-inspired music of Olivier Messiaen, joyful strands of Beach Boys-style polyphony and much more besides into a profound, unsettling meditation on humankind’s degradation of the ecosystems upon which all life on earth depends. The work’s variety of sounds and textures alerts us to the diversity of life that has declined so fast within living memory, coalescing to form a heartbreaking lament for a dying future. Listen to “At Home” and “Bank On” for a taste of Dirty Projectors’ haunting vocals and the score’s tonal breadth, and experience the album’s aching, melancholy heart with “Raven Ascends”. Longstreth, his band Dirty Projectors and Berlin-based s t a r g a z e capture the sadness of the unfolding extinction of multiple species, and challenge the comforting delusion that the human animal will find ways to survive on an “Uninhabitable Earth”.