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bership and identity. The Australian psychedelic rock band straightforwardly ap- pealed to the audience’s capacity to react, encouraging a collective response: “Are you too terrified to try your best? … / Do you really live without the fear? … / On and on we all go / Into another morning”. The message of hopefulness is clear in the initial words: “This could be the day that we push through / It could be the day that all our dreams come true”, like daydreams that are more real than real life, very much in the style of a psychedelic song. This selection ends with “Sky’s Grey” (A–18), from 2017, by the Canadian band Destroyer. It proves that the apocalyptic narrative is still very present in Western culture. Lyrics are both accusing and warning but, interestingly, they address the self – and by extension the listener – more than abstract social sys- tems and established orders: “Bombs in the city, plays in the sticks / Should’ve seen it coming / Should’ve taken care / Should’ve tried pretending that anything was there”. The voice is a disturbing whisper, bass frequencies prevail, and a dark acoustic atmosphere pervades the whole performance. The return to acoustic instruments, following a simple harmonic cycle in D major (I-VI-IV), is interesting. Many other songs could increase the list, including several by The Rolling Stones: The Stones, with raucous voice and syncopated beats, employed Dionysian shock to expose the dark side of nearly everything. They pronounced the inevitability of nu- clear destruction in “Gimme Shelter” and the pleasure and power of drug addiction in “Sister Morphine.” They solicited unbounded hedonism in “Some Girls,” conveyed the inevitability of alienation in human relations (“Angie”), pronounced the impossi- bility of cosmic identity (“2,000 Light Years from Home”), vindicated Lucifer (“Sym- pathy for the Devil”), and promoted violent revolution (“Street Fighting Man”).68 “Bad Moon Rising” (Creedence Clearwater Revival, 1969) embodied the princi- ple of contrast between happy music and pessimistic lyrics. The verse “I hope you’re quite prepared to die” revealed the acceptance of the outcome. How- ever, it was also a call to reaction, as in classical dystopia the appeal to fight is always present. Peter Gabriel’s “Here Comes the Flood” (Peter Gabriel, 1977) lamented the end of days: “Drink up, dreamers, you’re running dry / … We’ll say goodbye to flesh and blood”. Prince (“1999”, 1982); Johnny Cash (“The Man Comes Around”, 2002); and Alice Cooper (“The Last Man on Earth”, 2011) also composed dystopian music. Critical dystopia is visible in songs like “Micro- phones in the Trees” by Silver Mt. Zion (Pretty Little Lightning Paw, 2004), which begins by poetically detailing the oppressive regimes of surveillance to which we are subjected, before opening up into a refrain of utopian hope that, when 68 Dunbar 2002. Apocalypse as Critical Dystopia in Modern Popular Music | 87www.jrfm.eu 2019, 5/2, 69–94