Dougie Poole shares new song “The Rainbow Wheel of Death”
Hear the title track from the Maine-based singer-songwriter’s new album, out on February 24 via Wharf Cat Records.
Next year, country singer-songwriter Dougie Poole will share a new album called The Rainbow Wheel of Death. Out on February 24 via Wharf Cat Records, the Maine-based artist's latest project will contain the single "High School Gym," a Song You Need when it was released in August, and the album's title track, out today.
If you're a Mac user, you might recognize the origin of the new song's title — it's the cursor animation that appears when your computer is having a tough time. While this will lead most people to fits of frustrated rage or to simply google "are PCs good again," Dougie Poole tapped into a vein of existential dread for the "Rainbow Wheel of Death" song. In the track's dryly humourous-yet-jaunty world, the spinning wheel isn't on some laptop screen but inside us all, guiding the best and worst parts of ourselves. It's an uncomfortable realization to be sure, and one that's not so easily solved by logging off.
“The 'Rainbow Wheel of Death' is the unofficial name of the little loading animation that plays while your computer is busy," Poole says in a press statement. "Different people call it different things but it’s an old symbol - from the early operating systems I think - and everyone knows what it means. Sometimes it disappears as quickly as it appears and will leave you to your business. Sometimes it takes over for a while and then lets you go. Sometimes it means the end. But we see it every time we boot up a computer - round and dependable like a little moon. My computer is almost ten years old and starting to slow down before it goes, so I’ve been watching the rainbow wheel more and more these days.”