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 Trappers newest album, Holy Smokes Future Jokes, front man Eric Earley looked beyond mere existenceor even the end of itto contend with grander cosmic explorations: namely, the intermediate period between a persons 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, Earleys 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.