A country songwriter from Brooklyn’s indie underground, Dougie Poole blurs the lines between genre and generation on his third solo album, the Rainbow Wheel of Death. Rooted in sharp songwriting, Poole’s golden baritone, and the organic sounds of a live-in-the-studio band, it’s a classic-sounding record for the modern world, stocked with songs that make room for everything from old-school synthesizers to contemporary storytelling. 

Once hailed as the “Patron Saint of Millennial Malaise” for his sardonic wit and topical, tongue-in-cheek songwriting, Poole broadens his reach here. He fine-tunes his genre-bending approach to country music, too, with the Rainbow Wheel of Death reaching far beyond the genre’s boundaries for new sounds and unexpected textures. “High School Gym” builds a bridge between 2020s lo-fi textures and 1980s pop vibes, while “Must be in here Somewhere” — whose narrator sits at a lap top, searching through “Every Server Burning in North Carolina” for a digital souvenir of a long-lost relationship — mixes modern concerns with classic country instrumentation. If records like 2017’s Wideass Highway and 2020’s breakthrough release the freelancer’s blues told stories about uninspired millennials languishing in dead-end jobs and no-good relationships, then the rainbow wheel of death focuses on more universal issues like mortality, love, and the passing of the time.