Antony Micallef

Excavating an Aura

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Nearing the end of a decade that’s felt like a lifetime, it feels like our world has grown weary. A once-omnipresent optimism has given way to an absurd kind of acceptance, and each time there appears to be an answer, it is just as quickly hosed down the ideological stream into obscurity. Echoing many before him, the prolific singer-songwriter Jeff Tweedy once crooned, “Every generation thinks it’s the end of the world,” and this is certainly not the only time we’ve imagined that it might all be coming to halt. The fact that many of us have heard that sentiment, regardless of our familiarity with Wilco, might signal that this too shall pass, but, boy, it sure doesn’t feel like it.

When the world hits times like these, artists get to work, gathering the pure feeling from the