Although Blitzen Trapper has existed in various incarnations since the year 2000 I first heard of them when I traveled down to Florida for this years Langerado Festival roughly six months ago. They played a solid set back then, but I guess you could say they were lost amongst the festival’s more noteworthy acts. Part of that can be blamed on the festival planners {seriously, some of the stages had such ridiculous acts back to back it was hard to understand what was going on}, but some of the blame surely must fall upon these six boys from Portland. Seeing them perform last night on Conan finally convinced me to listen to last year’s album, Wild Mountain Nation (amazon) (itunes), and it’s easy to see how someone planning their lineup could be confused. They’re a bit punk rock, a bit southern throwback, a bit Simon and Garfunkel, and a bit of drum driven guitar rock as well.
mp3 : Blitzen Trapper - Wild Mountain Nation
mp3 : Blitzen Trapper - Futures & Folly
This album is good, but at times I feel like they just don’t know who they really are as musicians. It feels like Radiohead on one track and the Simon and Garfunkel on the next and then they adopt a weird Beatles meet Phantom Planet vibe on the next. They’re all solid songs but there is a cohesive thread that is definitely missing when you listen to the album as a whole.
I haven’t gotten a hold of their latest album just yet, but I hope they’ve decided to stick more to their melodic and harmony filled tracks like these two I’ve selected from their previous effort. I’ll try to score a copy of Furr sometime this week and give it a spin. The track they played last night on Conan was brilliant enough that I immediately started listening to the one album I got after seeing them in concert and that gives me high hopes that they’ve ditched some of their awkward teenage dichotomies and have matured more as a band.
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Ah yes, you will most definitely not be disappointed! Furr is really wonderful and dreamy, enjoy! Yes, they’ve matured, gelled, even, into a band with a distinctive sound and a constant thread. They have a nice write up in Rolling Stone this month too.
i actually ended up getting Furr later in the day after writing this post. i’ll probably have a blurb up by the end of the week. you’re right in that it does sound much more cohesive
This band is really full of genius’s . Seriously, soon everyone is going to figure it out.