Aztec Two-Step - "Almost Apocalypse"

Garbage is one thing you might find in a real-life alley. Also rodents, friends on bicycles, glass(es of wine), children. Among the differences between the content of dystopian folk-rock songs and that of life is the relative regularity in the former with which heroes encounter sages in alleys. The hero of my own life, for instance, has found sages in classrooms, cubicles, bedrooms and a flower pot on my windowsill, but never in an alley.

I once told a story on this blog about a night in Montreal spent walking alone. I was horrified by the baseness of my surroundings, of the untempered rage and naked horniness of my peers. As frightened as I was depressed, I strolled through downtown streets until I came across a man, about my age, sitting silently on a street corner contemplating ... what? The order of being and essence? The relationship between the moral and the aesthetic? He opened his mouth; I didn't breathe. But what came out of his gaping maw was not the Truth, as I had anticipated, but his dinner, and then his lunch, and then his breakfast. He puked copiously and for a long time. We were just outside an alley, though he was more prophet of doom than straight-up sage.

"Almost Apocalypse" tells much the same story of alienated wandering and yet, despite itself, is ultimately uplifting. Unfortunately for the doomsaying Aztec Two-Step, their music belies their message; after all, how bad can the world really be when it contains such sweet vocal harmonies, rollicking telecaster licks, and especially those bass roots, rising up the scale and falling back down again.

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