Portland’s Blitzen Trapper find ways to stay positive. On their new single “Requiem”—the fourth from their forthcoming album Holy Smokes Future Jokes—the group uses country music as a vessel for persistence through difficult times.
“[It’s] a song about enduring love and, though not entirely apparent, a song about the earth as it rolls, or maybe more generally life itself, its capacity to weather large scale extinctions and climate shifts,” says frontman Eric Earley. “A weird kind of love song with culty vibes to the endurance of sentience above and beyond mankind.”
That shadow of the apocalypse falls on the entirety of Holy Smokes Future Jokes, though the album mostly contemplates existential ideas about life and rebirth. It takes inspiration from the author George Saunders, including his 2017 novel Lincoln in the Bardo about death and purgatory.
Holy Smokes Future Jokes arrives September 25 via Yep Roc Records, and it’s available for pre-order now. Listen to “Requiem” below.
