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Holy Smokes Future Jokes

by Blitzen Trapper

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Sandy Naorin
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Sandy Naorin This album rips the roof off of my nihilist temple and opens my third eye to love and despair. Songs 4-8 are such triumphs and pleasures to listen to and to sing-along with. Favorite track: Requiem.
kay
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kay My brother died on March 27 of this year and somehow this song poked a finger right into the hole in my heart. 💔❤ Favorite track: Magical Thinking.
Chris
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Chris can’t wait to add this record to my collection.. i’ve listened to BT for years!
Jonathan Everett
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Jonathan Everett There is no better news than the release of new Trapper material. Your continued release of excellent new music is always appreciated to the nth degree but even more so at a time like this. Many thanks fellas. Cheers!
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1.
Baptismal 04:33
Rickety raggedy lost boy beating off laughing at his face in a spoon Same lame gamers in your sister’s basement breaking ties with the animal world. An unspoken curse but the pain is real Your brother and his girlfriend behind the wheel Shatter proof glass on the passenger side covered in red and the moons blue light On the curb with a blanket and your blood shot eyes Now you’re stepping in the river into waist high water let the current take it all away Radiant graceless clear and empty see the cheerleaders up on the rail The beautiful sage of the anti-gods applies color to a press on nail The lights flash blue and red all night your cousin laid out under ghostly white Empty bottle on the backseat floor filled with dreams from a forgotten shore And your heart left open like a bedroom door But now you’re stepping to the shoulder and the wind grows colder let the current take it all away Seas rise soft and silent countries shed their garments love lies very deeper deeper deepest can you find me? In the southern branch of the energy center that resides within my throat Theres a string bean lost by grinning sideways drowning in his coat A blood filled skull and a curved knife held by his mother daughter lover wife Seen in a dream that’s half a life That shatters as he wakes and he shakes his head He knows star crossed lovers always wake up dead But he feels the cold world just spinning instead Now you’re stepping in the river into waist high water let the current take it all away
2.
Old house on a running hill ramshackle yard to run in She was sent by her mother’s ghost while her father searched for tears Downstairs on the dressers edge late at night a face appears Thin eyed like a reptile tongue you are my own little death Every night to be amazed We recognize the devils face in the one you love Down the daylight basement stairs through the hills the shadow At the back the wall is bare the portrait of a child so fair We repeat the age old rhyme ouija ouija tell me will I live before I die? Downshift on the razor’s edge silent hearts will make you shiver All the voices in our head dark trees run to the river Praise god if you know the score smoke-screen to guard the basement door Down here in bardo’s light in the cycles days and years Every night to be amazed We recognize the devils face We repeat the age old rhyme ouija ouija tell me will I live before I die?
3.
Hold me baby don’t you let me run This midsummer rain makes my head Feel like a loaded gun. See the hunter coming through those trees His boots leave only hieroglyphs His dogs are made of fallen leaves. Turn the engine over headlights shine We’re racing down this darkness In a tunnel made of roots and twine. Dreaming, dreaming I’ve been bleeding all night See my lover at the screen door Moving softly in the kitchen light But she won’t see me. Hold me baby don’t you let me run Now, now Hold me baby don’t you let me run Don’t me deep like I’m the only one. Hit the vaporizer straight to the dome Take a hit of holy smokes But all I feel is more alone. God the light it hurts the sun goes pale. My head is spinning like a top My soul is like a wishing well. Hold me baby don’t you let me run Hold me deeper deeper deep Like I’m the only one. Hold me baby don’t you let me run Hold me deeper deeper deep Like I’m the only one. Hold me baby don’t you let me run. Deeper deeper let the radio just play.
4.
Trying so hard to believe there’s more to this life Than what you see, think magically In the night time drive way waiting for the man To break you into a million shattered parts But every human heart throws a shadow on this wall. Climb to the top of the tower that sits on the Outskirts of the town. He climbed right up behind you didn’t he And then he climbed back down to the ground A wrathful deity, lit a cigarette beneath a tree And then he cast his shadow long On the house where you were young On a street in a town that’s gone. Struck by a meteor sitting at a stoplight Fingers on the key, eventually You gotta face facts, he ain’t coming back So think magically, a million shattered parts But every human heart throws a shadow on this wall. On this wall.
5.
I’ve loved you so hard I can’t tell where it hurts I broke my wrist just trying to take off your shirt Your parties bore me but the music just slays I figure the afterlife might be the same way Okay let’s break into the masonic temple tonight You brought some blotters yeah let’s start things off right Is there anything in this whole world that’s worth putting up a fight Yeah no Your grandma died and left her mercedes benz You say these curves at night might be how it ends You say if there’s a god he’s thin as a rail No getting hungry moving slow as a snail Oh well Okay let’s break into the masonic temple tonight You brought some blotters yeah let’s start things off right Is there anything in this whole world that’s worth putting up a fight Yeah no I’ve loved you so long I can’t tell where it hurts I ain’t ashamed to say I’ve tried on your skirts If you’re the main course does that make me dessert? Oh god let’s break into the masonic temple tonight You brought some blotters yeah let’s start things off right Is there anything in this whole world that’s worth putting up a fight Yeah no This life is comedy and horror combined like popping cheap pills and a quart of boxed wine Stop all this talking i’ll go fix you a drink Let’s do the world a favor and let’s all go extinct Okay, let’s do the world a favor yeah let’s all go extinct
6.
Requiem 03:33
I like the way you roll honey You’re made of solid gold I like the way you roll honey You’re made of solid gold. Come in out of the cold and Forget all the things they sold you I like the way you roll You’re made of solid gold So let’s shine a light Shine a light through the dark day. I like the way you roll honey You’re made of solid gold. Rolling down through the cold Empty spaces of the cosmos so let’s Shine a light Shine a light through the dark day. I like the way you move oh now Everything’s green and blue And there’s no place left to go oh no This is the only show. You’re never gonna lose your soul Even if the reaper shows his face Then life will start anew Yeah cause that’s just the way you move So let’s shine a light Shine a light through the dark day.
7.
Holy Smokes, these future Jokes You called me on my land line just to blow some smoke And tell me that our whole life feels like a hoax Just like the lunar landing and those talking goats Surprise surprise surprise Can’t you see it shining in my eyes Surprise surprise surprise We’re all so learned and so civilized my baby Holy smokes these future jokes Eight billion people spinning just like bicycle spokes The cinematic scope of the apocalypse When it all goes to hell there won’t be nothing left But chips and dips in mini-marts But what’s the shelf life of a broken heart Surprise surprise surprise Can’t you see it shining in my eyes Surprise surprise surprise We’re all so learned and so civilized my baby Holy smokes these future jokes Found your number on a scrap of paper in my coats The earth has been around for several billion years And all us humans think we’re special but We’re nothing but the unshed tears Of a distant star, never knowing just who we are. Surprise surprise surprise Can’t you see it shining in my eyes Surprise surprise surprise Our masochism goes so undisguised Surprise surprise surprise We’re all so learned and so civilized my baby
8.
I lost my lover deep inside this valley I was searching when I thought I heard her call But the echoes in the canyon so much like my lover’s voice Were the high white cries of eagles spinning careless in the wind. I lost my lover in an old house off the freeway We’d stopped to take some rustic photographs. I walked the halls and empty rooms but all I heard was rain So I made my way up to the cemetery on the hill. The wild goose runs circles round the wishing well Till dawn. All the sons and unwed mothers make their way down Thru the fog. Does the howling of these dire wolves wake the dead Or just the dogs? I lost my lover in the shadows of this city. We were waiting for our rideshare in the rain. She kissed me twice and snapped her fingers And suddenly I stood at the edge of every world I’d ever conjured in my mind. The wild goose runs circles round the wishing well Till dawn. All the sons and unwed mothers make their way down Thru the fog. Does the howling of these dire wolves wake the dead Or just the dogs?
9.
Dead Billie Jean, in the shotglass lies a quarter And a tear for every year in the houses of the holy handed Bride to be, technology. Born on the fourth of july, no question who the mother was But the father’s on the lamb, playing spoons and grand piano In a family band, prosthetic hand. I was six feet under playing bones with Brian Jones And Jim, cause there’s a right way and a wrong way Here to die. And there ain’t no reason why. Dead Billie Jean, what have you seen In the twilight’s dawn? So Dead Billie Jean, she paid her tab And drove out through the Indiana dawn Never knowing something’s wrong, never recognize In the great bird’s eye. I was smoking dope with Lincoln In a Chrysler on the hill In the no man’s land where spirits seem to go Cause it’s all in who you know. Honest Abe he cracked his window just a skosh To breath, said it’s time that we both leave, You and me and Billie Jean Cause we’re just sliding through the ether in a dream And nothing’s what it seems to be to me.
10.
Hazy Morning 03:59
Hazy morning Jogging my head Remember what you said That God is either dead or maybe coming Right up behind me. Hazy morning We were driving that line Feeling so fine Never so blind as the day I let you Leave the fold. So if you’re ready to roll with us again There’s a bright white light at the tunnel’s end. It was back in 1998, the shots rang out And the old world passed away. Hazy morning It’s a filthy kind of lie Let the voices tell you why Like a knuckle in your eye try to hold on To the razor’s edge Hazy Morning We took her to the van Parked behind the grandstand Brown grass growing And the blood was flowing like a backwards rain. So if you’re ready to roll with us again There’s a bright white light at the tunnel’s end. It was back in 1998, the shots rang out And the old world passed away. Hazy morning Whatever gets it done There’s a hand for every gun The voices coming hard and fast A trench coat tailored for the witching hour. Hazy morning Now I’m left without a place A country or a face No way to replace this religion Of my childhood haunt. So if you’re ready to roll with us again There’s a bright white light at the tunnel’s end. It was back in 1993, the guitar’s were slaying And the old world passed away. So if you’re ready won’t you roll with us. With us.

about

Singer-songwriters have been tackling existential questions about life and death since time immemorial… or at least the 1960s. But when it came to Blitzen Trapper’s newest album, Holy Smokes Future Jokes, front man Eric Earley looked beyond mere existence—or even the end of it—to contend with grander cosmic explorations: namely, the intermediate period between a person’s separate lives on earth, “and what it means to escape the cycle of birth and rebirth,” he explains.

Inspired by George Saunders’ 2017 experimental tome, Lincoln in the Bardo and the Tibetan Book of the Dead, Earley’s lyrics take the listener on a wild and dramatic journey through rivers of waist-high water in the aftermath of a tragic car wreck and the hazy morning before a murderous moment, and from getting blitzed to the point of extinction inside a masonic temple to a stop for chips and dip before the apocalypse. Along the way, there’s also an occasion to smoke dope with Abe Lincoln and play bones with Brian Jones, slide through the ether in a dream, and confront the Intermediate States while bathed in the glow of the bardo’s light - that transitional state between death and rebirth.

credits

released September 25, 2020

All songs written and arranged by Eric Earley
Produced and engineered by Raymond Richards at Long Play
Mixed by D. James Goodwin
Mastered by Adam Gonsalves at Telegraph Mastering

Guest musicians:
Michael Blake, keys
Heather Woods Broderick, backing vocals
Haley Johnsen, backing vocals
Ben Latimer, saxophone
Luke Price, fiddle
Raymond Richards, upright, keys, pedal steel


2020, Magnolia Music, LLC under exclusive license to Yep Roc Records

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Blitzen Trapper Portland, Oregon

Est. 2000
Oregon

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