CarbonWorks is a unique musical project launched by Neal Barnard in 2016 and including luminaries in the music world, including Chris Thomas King, who is the New Orleans blues guitarist who played lead roles in the Coen Brothers’ film O Brother Where Art Thou and Ray; Naif Hérin, a wonderful Italian singer who will melt your heart; and some fantastic rock musicians, a classical string quartet, jazz players from Baltimore, and traditional Vietnamese musicians. The 11 songs on the debut album range from beautiful ballads to hard-rocking punk and straight-ahead jazz. God Save the King is about betrayal. It makes reference to Kristallnacht—the night in 1938 when neighbor turned against neighbor in Berlin—leaving shop windows destroyed and many people dead. Some have said the song must be about the xenophobia of 2016, first with Brexit and then the U.S. presidential election. And indeed November 9 was the date when Berlin’s streets were covered with shattered glass and also the date when Americans awoke to headlines of an unexpected and disturbing election result, and people looked around them with fear and suspicion. But the song takes aim at a human weakness that is, unfortunately, not limited to a single place or time. The album version starts spare, gradually builds, and eventually turns crazy, rather like the world we find ourselves in. Because it is neither major nor minor key, the scale creates an unsettled sound that contrasts with the major chords under it. The radio mix version is trim, beginning with a beautiful new introduction. The video combines musical performance with archival footage from Germany in the late 1930s. Initially, the worrisome images of a country arming for war are broken up by hopeful and happy family images. But as time goes on, we see that the two kinds of images are the same thing—happy children are soon recruited for a deadly machine.