Blitzen Trapper: Praise For Portland's  Brazen Borrowers

New To Me

Blitzen Trapper with all the trappings...

Blitzen Trapper actually became 'new to me' twice. The band's name always conjured up a picture of Blitzen, the famous reindeer and Trapper, as in an animal trapper. As humorous as that picture is, it left me with a distinct image in my head of what their "sound" would be. And hailing from Portland, Oregon where my brother and his family lived, only reinforced that image. Pacific Northwest mountain men with a brazen country vibe, right?

With a few exceptions, my initial introduction to the band didn't live up to that image and while there's nothing de-facto wrong with that, I just didn't gravitate to them. I sensed they were a little all over the musical map, borrowing heavily from bluegrass, folk, alt country and pop but then imbibing it with a weird modern take on things that seemed more experimental than cohesive. There were a few songs I gravitated to on their first two albums, most notably "Texaco" and "Summertwin" but I pretty much wrote them off and in the process completely ignored their 3rd album, 2007's Wild Mountain Nation, despite it's critical acclaim.

Fast forward to September '08 when new label Sub Pop sent me the title track off of their 4th album, Furr, just as I was about to see them live for the first time at Monolith Music Festival. I was pretty blown away by both the song and the performance and the release of the full album on 9/23 completed the trifecta. Confident and strong and firmly planted in the alt country americana genre without managing to sound cliched or derivative, this was the Blitzen Trapper I had been looking for.

Vitals:

Band Members:

Led by Eric Earley: guitar, lead vocals
Erik Menteer:guitar, keyboard
Brian Adrian Koch: drums, vocals
Michael Van Pelt: bass
Drew Laughery: keyboard
Marty Marquis: keyboard, vocals

Conceived:

The band's first album was released in 2003 but the group has been together since 2000 when they reportedly had an epiphany of sorts about the kind of music they wanted to experiment with while on top of Mt. Hood. Their first 3 albums were self produced, although they signed to Sub Pop just before Wild Mountain Nation was released. Furr is their first official release with Seattle based Sup Pop who has nurtured more than their air share of Pacific Northwestern bands!

Roots:

All six of the band's members are from the Pacific Northwest; most grew up in Salem, Oregon (logging and trapping, right?) but the band has lived in Portland since 2000.  

Sound & Sounds Like:

A modern day blend of a young Bob Dylan and  a mid career The Grateful Dead was the first thought that popped into mind as I listened to the new album, Furr. The band's sound has always been uniquely American and while they have never been shy about combining every conceivable amalgamation of that term (often into a single song), it is the on Furr that they seemed to have found their 'true north'.

Listening to them at  Monolith (where I shot this picture) I was struck by the range of age groups that were packed- and I mean packed like sardines- into a small basement stage area meant to hold 300. It had the feeling of being underground at a miner's camp party, complete with a large red rock boulder IN the room.

That live performance brought back memories of everyone from the aforementioned Dylan and The Dead to The Band, with even a hint of the old Marshall Tucker Band on "Stolen Shoes and a Rifle" and yet it all sounded refreshingly new.

While some of the more experimental wanderings of earlier days is gone, this is a band whose sound keeps improving, getting steadier and steadier on their feet. They are clearly poised for big things ahead.

Bar Talk:

-The group has stayed pretty close to home since their first album was released in 2003. Bucking the trend of many indie bands who grow their early fan base in Europe, the group toured outside of the US for the first time last year.

• B. Trap as they are fondly nicknamed write, record and experiments  in the old Telegraph Building in downtown Portland, using Sally Mack's School of dance as their studio and reportedly "rescuing" an old dance school piano in the hallway that Early began playing and on which he wrote the bulk of Furr.
  
• The group is legendary for their early DIY style, often giving away their self produced Cd's after shows and creating a small but diehard fan base.
  

Essential:

Let's just start with the uber cool artwork for the album Furr.  A modernist wood cutting of the band's name set  into the trunk of an ancient redwood... that pretty much says it all...a new classic of American folk rock that stands up against the tallest of musical giants.

You  simply can not go wrong with Furr. I'd rank it as a top 10 album of 2008 so start there and then work backward to Wild Mountain Nation and beyond to explore how this band's experimentation help it find it's voice.

LINKS: Band Website | Tour Schedule