Peter Oren, Anthropocene (2017)

By SoDak

Going to the record store on Fridays is one of my great pleasures each week. I am able to talk with my friends who work there, search for music with Five-Inch Taint, and hear new artists. A couple Fridays back, I was sitting on the floor of the shop, flipping through recently acquired used country records. Overhead, I heard the opening notes of a song, which started with a simple acoustic guitar. It caught my attention and gave me chills—similar to the first time I heard Richard Buckner’s “Blue and Wonder” in 1994. Then this rich, warm voice started singing about sleeping in the bed of a pick-up truck, while in Missouri. I asked PaulySure what CD was playing. He said it was Peter Oren; I simply responded that I would buy it, not knowing anything else about this musician. My attention was captured by the story about how diesel trucks interrupted the singer’s sleep, so he continued on with his travels, commenting on what he sees and hears, such as trite songs on the radio, bullshit religious talk shows, and markers along the road where folks have died.

Several other folks in the store liked what they heard and bought copies of the record. I stood transfixed by the songs, trying to absorb the stories, pleased to hear critical reflections regarding the state of the world. The title track, “Anthropocene,” is a perfect song for this moment in time, given the ongoing transgressions of planetary boundaries. Climatologists indicate that in order to maintain a relatively stable climate system, the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere should be not more than 350 parts per million (ppm). As of November 2017, the concentration is over 403 ppm. The tipping point, ushering in runaway climate change, is 450 ppm. It is now estimated that given current rates of carbon emissions, we will hit this mark in nineteen years. In other words, we are racing to this point. Peter Oren opens this song with the question, “Where will I go, when I don’t want to be with ideal hands waiting catastrophe, here, here, here, in the Anthropocene?... How will we escape this hell we’ve made?” He comments that change is not coming from above, as new pipelines and refineries are built. “How will we escape this hell we’ve made?” We must pick our fights, because “soon there will be nowhere left to hide?” The pursuit of endless profits undermines the larger dynamics that support life—“We need bees for more than their honey.” He repeats, “How will we will escape this hell we’ve made?” as the strings enter the song, creating more and more tension, as time runs out to respond to these issues. This is a brilliant song, mourning a world that is passing.

My heart was heavy, as stayed in the shop, just to listen to the whole record. Every song is filled with recognition of deep history, scars, sorrow, and love. There are moments in the songs where Peter Oren searches for hope and stands in defiance to the current trends. Our general isolation and passivity as a public is addressed in “Chain of Command,” as the powers that be feast upon our lives. The song, “Throw Down,” demands confrontation with the “power, money, and lies” that dominate the world. He even suggests that it may well be through a “Molotov.” He asks, “How long, how long, how long will we wait for change? How long, how long, how long will we wait in vain?” By stretching out these questions, Peter Oren adds weight to the situation. “Make your grandkids proud. It’s time to throw down. Tell me are you with we. It’s time to get busy. Tonight.” In “New Gardens,” he celebrates collective action through community gardens, in order to ground us, against the new dust bowls that are in creation. The main point is that we should not act alone in these struggles.

After I left the record store, I went home to listen to Anthropocene several more times, trying to take in this beautiful, heartfelt collection of songs. The record is sparse and quite mellow—mostly centered around the acoustic guitar, while being accompanied by bass and drums, with the occasional violin, pedal steel, and keys. It is a contemplative record, asking serious questions and searching for connections and actions. These songs create space for grieving—as he notes in the closing number, “shit’s fucked up…. Welcome to this record, goodbye to this world, may a new one be unfurled.”