On Thursday, a group of atomic scientists announced they'd made an adjustment to the minute hand of the Doomsday Clock, that cheery device that lets us know exactly how close we could be to global annihilation. It now displays just two-and-a-half minutes to midnight — the nearest it's been since 1953.
If The Clock strikes 12 anytime soon, you can bet Parker Millsap will be there to welcome the end of the world with a song. In "The Very Last Day," the singer-songwriter, born in Purcell, Okla., and raised in the Pentecostal church, imagines an apocalypse in which the Four Horsemen are blues, folk, gospel and rock 'n' roll. For an upcoming episode of Austin City Limits, Millsap and his band give the song a loose, shuddering feel, as if staggering down a red-dirt road to meet their maker, a mushroom cloud erupting against the sky.
Millsap's full Austin City Limits performance airs on PBS this Saturday, Jan. 28 at 9 p.m. ET. The episode also features Band of Horses.
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