In a year full of Portland bands breaking through to the
national level, no one else captured the hearts—and iPod
playlists—of rock fans quite like Blitzen Trapper.
Their self-released third album, Wild Mountain Nation,
uprooted the band’s sound from its familiar terrain of fragmentary
lo-fi and relocated it to a land where breezy folk, blistering country
rock, and the occasional synthesizer breakdown made for friendly
neighbors. The sleepy harmonies on “Futures & Folly” and “Summer
Town” were hitched to Big Star-style acoustic pop formulas. In-the-red
rave-ups like “Devil’s a-Go-Go” and “Murder Babe” alternated between
shambling and mathematically precise, as cooing melodies cut through
distorted electric guitar duels. The epic title track surged with the
kind of classic rock licks not heard since Neil Young and the Allman
Brothers owned the airwaves. And throughout the album, harmonica and
banjo jams bubbled up in interludes—even in the middle of
otherwise straight-ahead rock songs. These impromptu hoedowns gave
Nation something of a split personality. On one side of the
fence, there was the city-dwelling Blitzen Trapper: a band of pop-savvy
tunesmiths, armed with stomp boxes and synthesizers. And on the other
side, there was the backwoods Blitzen: a pack of shirtless rubes,
plucking banjos and chewing tobacco for an audience of tumbleweeds and
cacti.
In all, the album charmed the socks off bloggers, led to a record
deal with Sub Pop, and even received that most coveted stamp of
approval, Pitchfork’s “Best New Music” designation. For the past two
months, Blitzen Trapper has been expanding its empire, annexing more
territory for the Wild Mountain Nation with a tour of
Europe.
“These Euro crowds are amazingly receptive and open,” says singer
and
songwriter Eric Earley by email. “They seem to love music in a
refreshingly
genuine way.”
Now that the band is back home, their attention has turned toward
putting the finishing touches on the follow-up to Nation.
According to Earley, the new album is a few details shy of completion
and represents another significant step forward for the band. Although
he was reluctant to articulate how the new material differs from their
previous work, he assured fans that they could expect it to further
diversify Blitzen Trapper’s rapidly evolving sound.
“The new record is much different from Nation; it covers more
ground,” he explains. “Nation was a record that I spent a month
or two writing and recording. It just sort of happened. I don’t second
guess that kind of record.”
Blitzen Trapper has earned a well-deserved reputation for its
prolific output by regularly posting unreleased material on its
website. And when the band teased labels and media with a sampler of
songs from the album that would become Nation, not one of those
six songs actually made it onto the album. Still, Earley’s description
of the album’s short gestation rings true. Nation sounds like it
was recorded in a very condensed time span, a product of an intense
creative burst. Certainly, such an accelerated working style can be
partly attributed to the band’s working method. Blitzen Trapper records
at home on four-track tape, allowing the band to preserve everything
from fleeting song ideas to spontaneous experiments. No wonder, then,
the new record is already in the can. Not that the band are
curmudgeonly technophobes. If they have always employed analog
equipment to make its music, Earley insists the decision is not out of
stubborn loyalty.
“I don’t feel committed to anything but what sounds good to me,” he
says. “I still haven’t heard a computer-recorded rhythm section that
felt real to me, so I guess I continue with tape for certain things.
But I definitely use a mix of recording techniques and media.”
Regardless of how the band makes its music, one question remains:
What, where, or who is the Wild Mountain Nation? Is it an
outlaw attitude toward music that uproots fences and trespasses genre
boundaries? Is it a stretch of shacks in the heart of the Appalachian
Mountains? Is it a ramshackle union of front porch fiddlers and
basement amplifier arsonists?
“It’s everybody who chooses to love creation, instead of control it;
who decides to learn from the past, but live in this now,” Earley says.
“There’s a certain amount of losing the world in order to gain life.
And I don’t really acknowledge human differences on a nationalistic
level. I don’t believe in USA, Europa, etc.—just people.”