“Space To Earth: Can You Hear Me?”
by Atlantic Rising
2007 song
"Space To Earth: Can You Hear Me?" is the one song on Sky Saxon’s SOS Radio album of 2007 that most closely resembles his usual garage rock. At five minutes, it’s by far the shortest track on the release. "Space To Earth: Can You Hear Me?" is comprised of an electric guitar playing a lovely (if simple) chord pattern. Also defining the performance are the soft but irrepressible rock ‘n’ roll-style drums.
Over a circular musical pattern, a particularly confident Sky bellows his apocalyptic, cosmic lyrics. This time around, the topic is a million suns laying waste to everything you (yes you!) have. That’s the subject, at least, until Sky turns his ire towards more specific targets. “Court-martial your generals!” he demands, as the gorgeous guitar continues to spiral around and around him.
Not that he’s calmed down much by the prettiness of the music behind him:
This is a message from space
Earth, you’re such a disgrace
You’re about to wipe out the human raaaaace!
Sky Saxon’s voice was generally more mellow in his later years (he was 68 when he recorded this). But when the rage-fires burned, he was still helpless to stop the conflagration: he erupts again into the jagged howl of his punky youth as he cries out for this pitiful species and its endless wars.
It was during the Father Yod years, and especially the two Yodship records, that Sky turned his attention to what he feared would be the fiery end of the planet. More specific objections to political dereliction and military misadventure had begun in earnest with 1994’s Down The Nile project by Fast Planet. On "Space To Earth: Can You Hear Me?" you can tell that none of this had been a fluke, or passing fancy. Here he was decades on, in 2007, still lamenting the tragedy of the human spirit and shouting exhortations for peace that became angry condemnations by the time they land on your ears.
"Space To Earth: Can You Hear Me?" is spine-tingling. It’s a remarkable and frightening end to the otherwise ruminative SOS Radio and proves that Sky Saxon remained a true believer in his muse and his music until the end.
