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Streaming + Download
Pre-order of 100's of 1000's, Millions of Billions. You get 4 tracks now (streaming via the free Bandcamp app and also available as a high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more), plus the complete album the moment it’s released.
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releases May 17, 2024
$12USD or more
Record/Vinyl + Digital Album
Pressed on clear blue vinyl + limited to 1,000 copies worldwide! Pressed at the state-of-the-art facilities at Citizen Vinyl in Asheville, North Carolina!
Includes digital pre-order of 100's of 1000's, Millions of Billions.
You get 4 tracks now
(streaming via the free Bandcamp app
and also available as a high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more), plus the
complete album the moment it’s released.
shipping out on or around May 17, 2024
edition of 1000
15 remaining
Purchasable with gift card
$25USDor more
Record/Vinyl + Digital Album
Black vinyl LP pressed at the state-of-the-art facilities at Citizen Vinyl in Asheville, North Carolina!
Includes digital pre-order of 100's of 1000's, Millions of Billions.
You get 4 tracks now
(streaming via the free Bandcamp app
and also available as a high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more), plus the
complete album the moment it’s released.
shipping out on or around May 17, 2024
Purchasable with gift card
$25USDor more
Compact Disc (CD) + Digital Album
Arrives in a CD wallet!
Includes digital pre-order of 100's of 1000's, Millions of Billions.
You get 4 tracks now
(streaming via the free Bandcamp app
and also available as a high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more), plus the
complete album the moment it’s released.
When I was young everything that they told me was wrong
The only kind of magic’s when the radio’s on
I never knew the words but I had to sing along
In this cosmic backseat education
All the girls in the bleachers with their magazine eyes
The boys in the basement when the cops roll by
If you think you know just who you are it’s probably all a lie
In this cosmic backseat education
In the backseat of a Chevy, yeah, she taught me how to breathe
Our love was like a tightrope and to fall was to believe
She tied me up in knots and all I did was make her sneeze
In this cosmic backseat education
When you’re young everything that they tell you seems strange
Your feet are like the ocean and your mind is the cage
You can capture every instant, live your life like it’s a stage
In this cosmic backseat education
When I was young everything that they told me was wrong
The only kind of magic’s when the radio’s on
I never knew the words but I had to sing along
It’s a cosmic backseat education
A cosmic backseat education
A cosmic backseat education
Let me feel your heart, baby, hear your heart
Tell me that there ain’t a damn thing to pay for
A free hazy reckless kind of rundown world
That we walk through, hoping that we find out
That we find our way
As we comically and tragically breakdown
It’s all a cheap fantastical takedown
But a good woman’s going to see through your plan
And she’s gonna love you anyway just because she can
Ah damn
Young love, push and shove, lazy as a daisy
Growing deep into the surface of the city
Never gonna leave, never gonna love
Never gonna fly through the night sky drinking
Thinking maybe we could find out
Maybe find our way
As we comically and tragically breakdown
It’s such a cheap fantastical takedown
Is there an elephant in our room?
Honey baby, better get your kicks on soon
Magic man, Peter Pan, floating like an oil slick
Spinning like a dervish on the surface
Bang bang crazy beat your head against the wall
Blame fate, blame the modern state ‘cause you can’t relate
Here in real time
Is that your only crime?
As we comically and tragically breakdown
It’s such a cheap fantastical takedown
Is there an elephant in our room?
Honey to be honest I feel crazy as a nuthouse loon
On a full moon
Let me feel your heart, baby, hear your heart
Tell me that ain’t a damn thing to pay for.
A free hazy reckless kind of rundown world
That we walk through hoping that we find out
That we find our way
As we comically and tragically breakdown
It’s all a cheap fantastical takedown
I’ve been living like a ghost inside myself upon a shelf
On a distant planet, a crooked house that never sleeps
And this river that unwinds within my spine records the time
A thousand ripples racing from a pebble’s fall
While a lone coyote walks upon a highway running south
Drifting up into my mouth, a silent hemisphere
And in the quiet of my mind I find a stairway leading up
With amber lights that flicker like a sleeping storm whose form will remain
And I’m lost up forty flights of stairs with everyone in the world who cares
Searching for a sign upon the galaxy
See me sitting with the one I love in the planetarium
Silent, still and spacious as the axis turns, you learn to let go
I’ve been drifting like a ghost through the memories I love most
Like a grifter trading tarnished coin for future days
But with each death I’m reborn only to fall upon the thorn
And join the dance of light and energy that never fades or falls away
And I’m lost up forty flights of stairs with everyone in the world who cares
Searching for a sign upon the galaxy
See me sitting with the one I love in the planetarium
Silent, still and spacious as the axis turns, you learn to let go
Hello Hallelujah, I’ve been drinking from your wishing well
Like a teenage preacher in a homeroom fight, yeah
I been waiting night and day for that bell
Hello Hallelujah, I been taking down the names of the dead
If the devil is a dreamer, does he dream of me?
‘Cause to be honest, when I dream, it’s of him
Hello Hallelujah
Hello undertaker, I’m so inside out and upside down
In your mirror all I see now is the back of my head
But all I see is my own face around town
Goodbye cosmic creature, all we do when we’re together is drink
I’ve been obsessing on your likeness, got your name in my phone
Your avatar looks pretty in pink
Hello Hallelujah
Hello hallelujah, when I pray it’s like I’m sweeping the floor
Ain’t no nice way to say it, man the doorbell’s broke
That’s why I’m up here knocking on heaven’s door
Hello Hallelujah (Hello Hallelujah, Hello Hallelujah)
Hello Hallelujah (Hello Hallelujah, Hello Hallelujah)
9.
Long Game
10.
View from Jackson Hill
11.
Upon the Chain
12.
Bear's Head/At the Cove
about
There are numbers so vast they exceed the scope of human reckoning, concepts so immeasurable they surpass our capacity to understand. On their radiant new album, 100’s of 1000’s, Millions of Billions, Blitzen Trapper make peace with the unknowable, surrendering themselves to forces beyond their control as they explore the infinite with a broad mind and an open heart.
Inspired by singer/songwriter Eric Earley’s fascination with Buddhist texts and meditation (the title comes from a phrase that appears over and over in the Mahayana sutras), the album offers 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 here 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 of 100’s of 1000’s, Millions of Billions. “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.”
Launched roughly two decades ago in Portland, OR, Blitzen Trapper garnered early attention with a series of self-released albums before breaking out internationally with a pair of critically acclaimed LPs (2007’s Wild Mountain Nation and 2008’s Furr) that would cement their status at the forefront of the modern indie folk revival. Rolling Stone hailed the band’s “hazy, psychedelic Americana,” while NPR praised their “explosive live performances and infectious roots-rock swagger,” and The New York Times compared their songs to Tom Petty, Bruce Springsteen, and Neil Young. Dates with Fleet Foxes, Wilco, and Dawes followed, as did festival appearances at Bonnaroo, Lollapalooza, Newport Folk, and Coachella, among others. In the years to come, the band would go on to release six more similarly lauded studio albums, culminating with 2020’s Holy Smokes Future Jokes, which Mojo proclaimed “sound[s] like the Beatles at Big Pink.”
“Holy Smokes introduced me to The Tibetan Book of the Dead, which kind of served as a gateway into the world of Buddhism for me,” Earley recalls. “I started digging deeper and reading the sutras after that, which is what really drew me into the practice.” He found himself particularly fascinated with Buddhism’s teachings on the self and the freedom that comes with learning to let go of the artificial constructions that surround it. “Buddhism tells us that suffering comes from clinging to illusions, to rigid ideologies, to the idea of an individuated self,” he explains. “The doorway to ridding yourself of all that is meditation, and I found that a lot of these new songs started flowing very naturally from the state of consciousness I was getting myself into during those meditation sessions.”
At the same time Earley was learning to be present through meditation, he was also reconnecting with his past through those old four-track cassette tapes; in a mirroring microcosm of circularity, he found that the songs fit in with the newer ones he’d written, and he reworked, updated, and finished them with a clarity of perspective that comes with experience gained over time. The performances were loose and freewheeling, fully arranged and fleshed out but never overworked, and the carefree sense of spontaneity called to him. “What struck me the most was just how casual and off the cuff it all was,” Earley reflects. “I was working without any thoughts of the music industry, without any expectation of releasing or touring, so I was just capturing anything that popped into my head and moving on. There was a raw, time capsule quality to it, and it reminded me of why I fell in love with making music in the first place.”
Invigorated by the energy of those tapes, Earley borrowed a friend’s four-track machine and headed out to guitarist Nathan Vanderpool’s studio in rural Washington, where he began roughly two months of on-and-off sessions with Vanderpool and drummer Brian Adrian Koch. It was a slower process than normal for him—in part because he was splitting his time between recording and working with Portland’s homeless population, which had increased significantly since the pandemic. But the pace proved to be a perfect fit for the tracks, which incorporated sonic elements from the original tapes into the newly written songs drawn from Earley’s journey into Buddhism, as well as his experiences working in the shelter system. “The work I do outside of music inevitably finds its way into all of my songs,” he explains. “I think the shelter in particular has broadened my perspective about humanity, about the variety of desires we can have and the suffering we endure.”
That sense of empathy is clear from the outset on 100’s of 1000’s, Millions of Billions, which opens with the effervescent “Ain’t Got Time to Fight.” Warm and lilting, the track searches for meaning and joy in a world that can seem determined to beat it out of us at every turn. Like much of the record, the song carries weighty considerations beneath its playful exterior, grappling with the emptiness that threatens to consume us should we ever lose sight of the only true currency that matters in this world: love. The bittersweet “Cheap Fantastical Takedown” follows two vampires at a crossroads in their relationship, uncertain if eternal life is a blessing or a curse; the dreamy “Planetarium” (featuring Anna Tivel and Eric D. Johnson of Fruit Bats/Bonny Light Horseman) finds comfort and peace in learning to see the self as the cosmos and the cosmos as the self; and the urgent “Cosmic Backseat Education” revels in the simple pleasures of art for art’s sake. “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,” says Earley, who selected an abstract collage by Guided by Voices’ Robert Pollard for the album’s cover art. “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.”
Earley plays with that notion throughout the record, balancing the joy of purposelessness with the fear of nothingness in equal measure. The perpetually off-kilter “Dead God of the Green Arising” tracks a deity reborn on Earth as she learns to share her gifts with the natural world; the breezy “So Divine” follows a human reborn into a heavenly realm that becomes its own kind of hell with no further awakening to be found. It’s not all spiritual beings on the album—the hypnotic “Hesher in the Rain,” for instance, centers on a heavy metal drummer longing for a love he left behind, while the soulful “Upon the Chain” draws on the real-life story of Earley’s uncle, who escaped from a chain gang and drove home in a stolen station wagon—but in many ways, the distinction between man and god is a meaningless one. We’re all inextricably connected, and no matter what state we may find ourselves in at any particular moment, we’ve been here before, and we’ll be here again.
“With each successive death and rebirth, we learn more of love, more of life,” Earley explains. “The beings we live with and love have been with us for hundreds of thousands of years, for millions of billions of lifetimes.”
It’s more than we can fathom, and it’s all we’ve ever known.
credits
releases May 17, 2024
2024 Magnolia Music, LLC under exclusive license to Yep Roc, LLC.
All songs written, arranged, and produced by Eric Earley
Recorded by Nathan Vanderpool
Mixed by D. James Goodwin
Mastered by Adam Gonsalves at Telegraph Mastering
Vocals, Guitars - Eric Earley
Drums - Brian Adrian Koch
Keys - Michael Elson
Backing Vocals - Eric D. Johnson, Anna Tivel, Nathan Vanderpool
Banjo on ‘Planetarium’ - Eric D. Johnson
Violin - Anna Tivel
Front Cover Artwork: Father Collected Fish (2020) by Robert Pollard
All Other Artwork by Eric Earley
Layout by Nathan Golub
Eric D. Johnson appears courtesy of Merge Records
All songs written by Eric Earley
Wild Mountain Nation Music (ASCAP) All Rights Administered by BMG Rights Management (US) LLC
supported by 15 fans who also own “100's of 1000's, Millions of Billions”
1st time i heard DeathWish, i turned it off.
felt rushed, not the Isbell i've come to admire. really grab'd me when i took time to listen on the 2nd try. the writing on these songs stopped me in my tracks more than once. raw talent with just enough polish in the delivery.
thankyou Jason + 400 for another keeper swirlingmadness
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