Everyone's got a job to do, even the Grim Reaper. That's the message behind the latest single from Joe Hertler & The Rainbow Seekers, "Help", which premieres today exclusively through Live For Live Music. In addition to the new release-the group's first since 2019-the genre-fluid Michigan collective has announced a crop of fall tour dates with Proxima Parada.
Amid sleek vocals and fundamentally danceable drums, Hertler sets the scene as he and his Rainbow Seekers pick up The Angel of Death hitchhiking on the side of the road. Winding through grooves that sound like The Strokes at a chic '70s party, the band interlaces existential wonderings on the nature of fate with pulsating synths that make mortality merely an afterthought as we dance away our fleeting moments.
"Inspired by the Studio Ghibli film, Princess Mononoke, 'Help' intends to elaborate on the tight-knit relationship (or cyclical nature) of life and death," says Hertler of the track. "The two states of being are often seen as being in opposition of each other, but rather they are of same system, albeit, on different ends. If life is the design, then death is the recycler-a necessary cosmic process for the repurposing of atoms whose assignments have come to an end."
"This song is a story that attempts to personify the angel of death," Hertler adds. "He's supposed to show up to work and not complain, remain indifferent to the task: ferrying souls from point A to point B. He's ancient and lonely. Gods have come and gone, their souls he's even carried, and certainly none of them reply to his texts. I had always imagined death picking up the soul of a kid, perhaps killed in a bomb attack, and he tries to text God to be like... 'you f*cking serious, dawg? like, why her? She didn't deserve this...' Death is not supposed to be affected by the affairs and trifling of humanity, but humanity starts to permeate into his consciousness."
The new single comes amid a flurry of activity for Joe Hertler & The Rainbow Seekers, who just signed to Nettwerk (John Butler Trio, Cloudcord, Neil Frances). Armed with new music, the band will hit the road this summer and fall with Proxima Parada, beginning this weekend with a trio of shows in Fort Collins, CO (8/18); Denver (8/19); and Cheyenne (8/20). The tour will kick into gear come fall for a run of 17 dates that will carry the band from coast-to-coast in October and November.
Stream the new Joe Hertler & The Rainbow Seekers single "Help" via the player below or on your preferred platform. Click below for a full list of the band's upcoming tour dates, all of which are on sale now.
