Buzzard Premieres “Ancient Ruins of the 21st Century” Lyric Video
This is the second premiere from Buzzard‘s new album, Mean Bone (review here), to be posted on this site, and it comes with some context. I know. The c-word. Sigh. Just bear with me.
If you click that link, you’ll see that in the review, I said the record ends with a song called “Sorrow, Terror and Evil,” a heavy and lumbering culmination of the statement in doom that Buzzard‘s lone denizen, Christopher Thomas Elliott (also of the folk duo Austin and Elliott and various other solo works), was making throughout the songs prior. Cool way to end a declarative second full-length from Elliott‘s project, the only trouble is that’s not how the record actually ends.
Oops.
To be fair, that song is real and was on the version of Mean Bone that I got to review, it just got crossed up between the album being done and the other premiere being slated, hearing the thing, etc. As clerical errors go, it could be far worse. But once I heard it, I did want to write about “Ancient Ruins of the 21st Century,” because it changes on the level of persona the way Mean Bone finishes. It’s not at all an apex of the heavy riffage that rolls out in other songs. It’s a decidedly quieter, more contemplative finish.
Like a lot of Elliott‘s work to-date as Buzzard and elsewhere, it tells a story. Folk balladry, as a form, is crucial to how the material is framed — think of songs like “Murder in the White Barn,” which tells a troubling tale of its own through dialogue, and “Flies, Mosquitos, Rats and Sparrows,” which recounts a Chinese famine resulting from Great Leap Forward-era ecosystem tampering — and “Ancient Ruins of the 21st Century” isn’t his first foray into incorporating science-fiction as part of that.
To story, put succinctly below, is that far-future archeologists discover a mall and attempt to figure out what it’s for. Good luck. Hearing the song for the first time, I couldn’t help think of the sentient insects who evolve on Elliott‘s earlier-2025 Satiricus Doomicus Americus (review here), which I’ve been largely unable to put down, in the closing track “Cockroaches and Weed.” But it doesn’t seem like we know ultimately who these future entities are, only that they’re looking back and seeing how we lived through our savage age.
Elliott was kind enough to put together the lyric video premiering below for “Ancient Ruins of the 21st Century,” and especially as Mean Bone has been out for a couple weeks now and attention spans go the way of attention spans, I appreciate the chance to give the album review an addendum and let the song stand on its own as well, since that’s how I’ve experienced it.
If you’ve never heard Buzzard, Elliott or any of it, this might not actually be a terrible place to start. Just a thought.
Congrats. You made it through the context. I hope you enjoy:
Buzzard, “Ancient Ruins of the 21st Century” lyric video premiere
“Writing this song I imagined alien or human archeologists in the distant future excavating the remains of a shopping mall.” – Christopher Thomas Elliott
from Mean Bone by Buzzard: https://buzzarddoomfolk.bandcamp.com/album/mean-bone
Written, performed, and produced by Christopher Thomas Elliott
