Songs for the End of the World – Liverpool Everyman

Songs for the End of the World at the Liverpool Everyman (a single performance took place on 1 November).

Star rating: four stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ✩

Dom Coyote and his band the Bloodmoneys have taken inspiration from various sources for their gig-theatre piece Songs for the End of the World, not least of which being Philip K Dick’s novel Dr. Bloodmoney and David Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust, but the resulting work is far from derivative and full of originality and inventiveness.

Coyote himself takes on the persona of Jim Walters, sent off in a space rocket to Mars by the New Global Corporation, ostensibly in a bid to pioneer off-world colonisation.

Earth meanwhile is in an unspecified form of apocalypse and the UK has become New Albion, its remaining residents encouraged to enjoy an idyllic life sold to them by New Global.

In plastic villages like Ashley-Coombe people search for meaning whilst Jim becomes stuck in orbit. All that’s left for him is to transmit his collection of songs for the end of the world in the hope that someone somewhere may be listening.

The plot is thinly stretched and takes second place to the musical and poetic content, and what we experience is certainly more gig than theatre.

Nonetheless, the narrative thread woven through the various elements brings out a good deal of pathos, longing and anarchic anger, and there are plenty of opportunities for the cast to take satirical digs at politics, corporate corruption, religious zeal and plain hopelessness.

This might all be sounding gloomily nihilistic but, in the hands of Coyote and his four co-conspirators, it is both tremendously entertaining and strangely uplifting.

The playing and vocals from this band of multi-instrumentalists is first rate, and the sound balance impressively sharply done, especially considering this is a one night only appearance of the show at the Everyman.

All the band members have parts to play in the storytelling as well as the music with some humorous turns here and there, notably from John Biddle who dons a wig and headscarf to quote from a new Bible.

It’s Dom Coyote himself who takes the limelight though, with his unforgettably characteristic vocal style. There is a sharp intelligence in those twinkling eyes and his delivery of the material wills us to look beneath the surface of the words.

Songs for the End of the World, has played various venues previously and, with the soundtrack now available as an album, it doesn’t look as though Jim Walters is going to run out of oxygen in his perpetual orbit any time soon.

Nigel Smith

www.domcoyote.com/projects/songs-for-the-end-of-the-world