The End As A Mirror: Calebo muses on the climate crisis with ‘Will We Ever Learn?’

The chilling message of Calebo’s ‘Will We Ever Learn?’ is sheltered by its upbeat indie-folk exterior, but I’ve always imagined the end of the world to sound this anthemic. Enter: bright guitar – a riff that gets your head bopping by design. Warm vocals: wait until you hear their words.

Image Courtesy of Calebo

So, will we ever learn? The planet’s dying and we know it, but the sentiment gets lost in the infinite scroll. The “maybe tomorrow, but not today” of it all that frontman Dan Caleb captures so well, with a sigh consumed by the persistently jaunty guitar tone. Stylistically, the song echoes early anthems written by Mumford & Sons, or Sufjan Stevens at his most expansive. A blend of hopeless introspection and twisted buoyancy that screams, “If we can face these challenges, we can surely overcome them”. And therein lies the core juxtaposition of the song: Caleb’s guitar riff breathes throughout, progressively disrupted by Lubugumu’s drums. This signals a subtle journey from ignorance to awareness, made more prevalent amidst the lyrical stasis, with Caleb beginning as a metaphorical sponge and ending as dust.

The strength of ‘Will We Ever Learn?’ is captured best in this emotional contradiction. Stasis, then motion. Caring deeply, then feeling powerless to act. The individual against a media machine “selling second-hand fear” with little regard for humanity. A staple of protest music, its overt political commentary reads less as an accusatory lecture and more as a collective guilty conscience, a stark reminder of what we all stand to lose by ignoring the climate crisis. With this, the track transmits a powerful energy towards its listener. An energy of healing – not for the self, but for a dying planet.

With the title phrase serving as its central energetic loop, Caleb calls on his listener with what is both a warning and a worn-down shrug. There is an astute awareness in this song that asking the question is the first step towards a hopeful resolution, so Calebo asks it over and over until the answer moves from silence to, well, anything else. Will we ever learn?

For all its fatalism, the track is fresh, powerful, and healing. The overarching tension of push-and-pull between action and powerlessness serves as an apt narrative force, anchored by Calebo’s intentional instrumental choices. Ultimately, ‘Will We Ever Learn?’ acts as a musing on the end of the world, while feeling like a new beginning.