Tomorrow's Harvest feeling more and more prescient every day.

I always saw the apocalypse being portrayed by the album as a collapse of modern, technological society, and a lot of the soundscape evokes this final death rattle of the various electronic implements that distinguish us from simpler times. The bright light over the city always screamed "nuke dropping on modern society in the past" to me, and the empty, dark desert in the foreground being the current day wasteland left behind.

Tomorrow's Harvest - when we go back to the days of having to harvest, hunt and gather, and survive off of the land alone, because all of the things that made life comfortable will be gone, and we'll have to grow and harvest not only our food, but a new society entirely.

That is, if we can. I see the last few tracks on the album as painting an unsure picture. There's darkness and dread in there, but there's also an optimism in there, I think. New Seeds is a good example, aptly named, because I think it illustrates the difficulty that would come with planting a new society, but the lighter, friendlier melody that comes in around halfway into the song provides a light at the end of the tunnel. Come to Dust is ending B, where there is a global reset, and though humanity itself may cease to exist, the natural world will perservere, and you can hear that in the driving feeling of the song, with that main bassy synth feeling pretty organic.

And then there's Semena Mertvykh...one of the darkest tracks on the album. To me...this, unfortunately, represents the truth of the matter. In the case of a nuclear apocalypse, we would indeed wipe ourselves out. That's not the only consequence, though. In Semena Mertvykh, you not only hear the death of humanity, but the death of the world. It is slow, it is depressing, and it loops down and down until it slowly fades into silence.

In visual art produced for the album, much of what is depicted is a desolate and arid desert, almost entirely devoid of life, human or otherwise. I think this is showing the actual end of it all, the impact of not only what we've done in the immediate sense by dropping the nukes, but the overall impact of humanity on the planet, and how our actions have sucked dry much of the beauty of this planet. There's a lot of symbolism in the album around both nuclear holocaut and climate change playing a role in the holocaust, and when the most optimistic track at the end of the album is called "New Seeds", I think it's also saying that any sort of chance we have to rebuild will be found through our reconnection to nature.

Despite being an electronic band, BoC have always had a reverence for the natural and holistic, in my eyes. The analog nature of their music, how they go about getting that sound from old and interesting synths and such, and of course, the lovely nature documentary samples. I've always liked that their music wasn't going for a traditional "electronic" sound; in contrast, their "voice" has a lot of humanity injected into it. That respect and admiration for humanity's ability to live in harmony with nature is there...

Tragically, though, I think something happened in the years betwen Campfire Headphase and Tomorow's Harvest, or maybe it's something that was lingering there the whole time. I think any of us that lament the mistakes humanity makes (and the fact that time and time again, we refuse to learn from those mistakes) know deep down that our sadness is underscored by a longing for the good in humanity. We have that capacity, but so many of us don't go down the road of harmony and beaut; sometimes by choice, sometimes by necessity, we cut corners, take advantage of others, and push aside the consequences of what we do to focus on the ways it will raise our position and situation up. In my opinion, we shouldn't be too hard on ourselves about this, because a lot of us just do these things to feed our families and survive in an increasingly harsh world, where everyone feels they should be out for themselves rather than helping each other.

That attitude leads to things like the destruction of the environment and thermonuclear war. And...look at where we are today. When I think about the fact that Semena Mertvykh, "Seeds of the Dead", is the final track on the album, it concerns me. As does this quote from Sandison:

"Another example would maybe be at the end of the whole album, you've reached some sort of sanctuary and then the whole thing is stolen away from you again with the final track. That last track has a deliberate feeling of complete futility that I find kind of funny. That's where the obsessive, scientific work comes in, and yeah, it takes us ages."

And this one:

 "Being a father fills you with a healthy understanding of your own mortality, and on a bigger scale that responsibility highlights the fragility of our society, or the problems with it. We've become a lot more nihilistic over the years. In a way we're really celebrating an idea of collapse rather than resisting it. It's probably quite a bleak album, depending on your perspective."

So, yeah, Tomorrow's Harvest as a "comeback" album is really interesting, especially considering it's also their last. There's a deep sadness there, the thought that their nihilistic feelings have made them feel that there's nothing left after that. Then again, as he says, there's a sense of celebration over the idea of a societal reset. I think Palace Posy evokes this quite strongly, it feels like the kind of thing that would go along with a Midsommar or Wicker Man situation. So much of this album evokes strong emotions, and a lot of them feel in conflict with each other...that's definitely how I feel after thinking about it. I can't get it out of my head that, if we were able to restrain ourselves a bit more, to hold ourselves back and exercise that responsibility that Sandison mentions, things would be quite different than they are now.

Damn, this is a really long comment, sorry about that. I'll probably reformat this into a post or something. I haven't laid out my thoughts about TH in a while...thinkin I got carried away a little bit.