Dougie Poole

“How do feelings of grief and loneliness become complicated by crazy new technology? How does country, this American tradition of reflective and self-aware music, become complicated by our deepening understanding of the parallel American traditions of violence, theft, and exclusion?” Dougie Poole wrote in 2017 about his debut album, Wideass Highway. Alex Robert Ross of FADE said he “makes country songs for day-jobbers, psychedelic like a batch of mushroom-infused chocolates passed around at the Irish pub beneath your office.” His latest, 2023’s The Rainbow Wheel of Death, carries it on.