Watch the video for the first single from it below.
Portland’s Blitzen Trapper who we are big fans of around these parts have announced their new album “100’s of 1000’s, Millions of Billions” will be released on May 17th 2024 via our friends over at Yep Roc. The 12-track collection arrives nearly four years after 2020’s “Holy Smokes Future Jokes”, and sees the Portland, OR-based band leaning into their psych rock-washed, classic songwriting roots. Produced by singer/songwriter Eric Earley, the new record was recorded by guitarist Nathan Vanderpool at his studio in rural Washington. The album also includes backing vocals by Eric D. Johnson (Fruit Bats/Bonny Light Horseman) and Anna Tivel on song ‘Planetarium’ (Tivel also plays violin and sings throughout), while the cover artwork is an abstract collage by Robert Pollard (2020’s Father Collected Fish).
Inspired by Earley’s fascination with Buddhist texts and meditation (the title comes from a phrase that appears over and over in the Mahayana sutras), “100’s of 1000’s, Millions of Billions” offers, according to the press release, “a captivating take on rebirth and transcendence, and the circularity of existence, navigating its way through the space beyond dreams and reality, beyond gods and mortals, beyond life and death. The songs are as sincere as they are surreal, rooted in rich character studies and deep reflection, and unfolding like a riddle-filled journey that asks many questions and offers no answers. The production is intoxicating to match, blending lo-fi intimacy and trippy psychedelia into a mesmerizing swirl of analog and electronic sounds. Add it all together and the result is a gorgeous, sprawling collection wrapped in lush layers of synthesizers and washed out electric guitars–a poignant, expansive exploration of perception and purpose that manages to look both forwards and backwards all at once.”
“This whole project grew out of a box of old four-track tapes from the ’90s that I found recently,” Earley explains. “The tapes were full of songs I’d written and recorded back when I was 19 or 20 years old, and the sound and the spirit of those recordings got me excited to start writing music again, to go back to working the way I did when I was first starting out.”
Blitzen Trapper has also shared the ruminative lead single ‘Cosmic Backseat Education’ alongside a puppet-starring video, directed by Mychal Sargent. “I remember lying in the backseat of my parents’ car as a kid and just listening to the radio, which I think is where I got most of the education that I’ve used in my life and my career. We’re so brainwashed to have these goals and milestones that we all chase, but music is inherently purposeless outside of joy. If you can learn to see that same purposelessness in life, it frees you up to enjoy every moment,” explains Earley of the song, adding about the contrastingly playful video, “Everybody says the puppeteer is in control, but everybody knows the puppet is actually calling the shots. Mr. Rogers meets Kill Bill, vigilante justice but only cotton stuffing gets spilled in these streets!”
“100’s of 1000’s, Millions of Billions” is available for pre-order now.
