“The great wheel turns, our time comes, and our time goes – snuffed out and returned to the dust, the dust that migrates over the eons. We shall be reborn over and over as Galactic Dust. Stardust – to orbit forgotten moons as glacial time relentlessly pushes on. We are small, we burn brightly and briefly over and over throughout eternity”
David Thrussell - Snog
‘Death Is Only A Dream’ is the final song on ‘Lullabies For The Lithium Age’, the long awaited new album by Snog. An electronic paean to the fact that we are indeed ‘but dust and shadows’ (Horace), it features the City of Prague Philharmonic Choir in an affirmative final section before fading out with the sound of waves breaking in another infinite cycle also evoked on the album cover. A video for the song made by Richard Grant shows a man spinning in space to portray the ‘symphony of everything’ we are and ever will be.
David Thrussell is an outlier, provocateur and enigma. An artist that challenges, inspires and transforms. We are lucky to have him. Coaxed from a fitful half-decade of semi-retirement in his compound in the Australian outback, Thrussell now helms the extraordinary new Snog album, 'Lullabies For The Lithium Age’.
A mature and fully-realised statement in voice, song and philosophy, 'Lullabies For The Lithium Age' is an epoch-defining recording that almost never happened. Wracked by crises of doubt, identity, emotional collapse and mental health, Thrussell had effectively withdrawn from public life and most of his creative endeavours, at one point spending almost a year bed-ridden and virtually comatose. Only the timely intervention of renowned therapist Dr. Ian White averted his final spiritual and physical disintegration. Thrussell - a singular Antipodean who had animated a generation with righteous electro anthems and smouldering industrial laments - had burned out, cashed out and crashed out.
Placed under constant supervision and medicated with the most advanced treatments available, it took two years of an extreme therapeutic regimen - pain, torment, fiduciary stewardship and personal tutelage - for Dr. White to rehabilitate Thrussell and for him to take his first halting steps toward composing, performing and recording once again.
The result is a revelation. 'Lullabies For The Lithium Age' is an uncommon event of profound import - broken Gospel ballads of nihilism and regret, funereal chants of mortality and windswept ache - and a spiritual song-arc that speaks in minimal yet august tones. The barren ocean shore at the end of the world. The very last breath of the very last song. It may not be the album you want, but it is the album you need. For these truly are...Lullabies for the Lithium Age.
LULLABIES FOR THE LITHIUM AGE TRACKLISTING
1 The Reaper
2 Ball And Chain
3 Cog
4 Spätzle Machine
5 The Sweet, Sweet, Treacle (Of Surrender)
6 Birthday@TheMall
7 Tear It All Down (With A Song)
8 Lee Harvey Oswald
9 Saving Seeds
10 Death Is Only A Dream*
*featuring The City Of Prague Philharmonic Choir conducted by Hans Herbert Emmerich