Album Review: Furr by Blitzen Trapper

*rating* 9

*summary* Portland Alt-Country-Indie-Pop soon-to-be supergroup capture the wild northwest in a bottle- complete with looming clouds, misty tree-scapes, and abundant beard-hair.

*This two person review is by Ethan E. and Sage T.*

ST - Today my esteemed colleague and I are reviewing "Furr" by Blitzen Trapper.

EE - And I must say, i don't think i've heard a more appropriate album title/band name combination since KISS released "My Ass".

ST - KISS never released an album called that.

EE - what? really?

ST - Maybe you're thinking "Music from the Elder".

EE- No. I am not. I will never think of that album again.

ST- Well...segwaying back to the topic - unlike Music from the Elder, Blitzen Trapper's "Furr" only APPEARS to be a Tolkiensque romp through middle earth.

EE - And it doesn't suck with ever increasing magnitude.

ST - agreed.

EE - So the subject has been broached, and we might as well get it out of the way - (if you haven't heard them yet) Blitzen Trapper play exactly the type of music you'd expect them too. It's folksy, country, artsy, and constantly fluctuating between balladry and barn stompers. Yet...and this is big 'yet'... it's somehow so much better than all those expectations.

ST - That's a pretty accurate summary, but to me it's not 'somehow', it's very clearly 'knowhow'. It's not an intangible quality that makes Furr good...it's the amount of tangible qualities Blitzen Trapper has tossed into the mix. Any one of these songs could have escaped from any number of dusty wild-west rockers - the Black Crowes, Drive By Truckers, The Builders and The Butchers - but Blitzen Trapper has strung them up, stuffed them, added glass eyeballs, and proudly nailed em to the living room wall.

EE - Give an example - I haven't really been able to pick the album apart, just sort of sat back and enjoyed.

ST - Well, take "gold for bread" - it starts as a southern rocker with a wicked guitar riff but soon weaves in static-squeal, finger-picking, pan-pipe, falsettos, and a bongo solo. Almost every (successful) song on Furr does that...starts you with something comfortable and familiar, and then layers elements in until you're left with something far richer than when you started. It's a trick that many bands have tried but few master - catching you with a hook, but developing a track's sound into something much more complicated and, ultimately, satisfying.

EE - Ohh...ok...yeah I see that. It's a neat trick - and i'll admit, it left me wanting to listen to the album over again. And I'm starting to notice all the little extra touches you mentioned...like video-game synthesizer on God & Suicide...it just shouldn't work but it does. It's subtle and brilliant.

ST - Or the 70's disco vibe on the appropriately named "Saturday Night" that they completely bend around a folksy southern rock quick-step rocker. Less subtle, but it still leaves me scratching my head, wondering how they pulled it off.

EE - So i'm reading liner notes, and these guys are from Portland. That doesn't surprise me one bit. Listen to Furr and it's like Bob Dylan reborn as a plaid-clad Oregon beardo. That's a huge compliment by the way.

ST - Being from the Northwest I can appreciate that association. It's another testament to Blitzen Trapper's ability to bend the familiar. This should be a simple Tex-Mex southern rock, and taken seperately, none of their pieces indicate they should feel like anything but....yet somehow it very much evokes the density of nature, the oppressive, relentless rain, the tranquiltiy of a forest...all the hallmarks of the pacific northwest itself. I have to say...mostly, i'm impressed.

EE - mostly....you're thinking of Stolen Shoes huh?

ST - yeah. I love this album...but there is one song that I just can't stand. "Stolen Shoes & a Rifle" is a steel-guitar, jaw harp twangin', musical-saw warbling slow ballad that is dead in the water before it even gets a chance to turn into something else. Sigh. 11 songs in and I was sure I was giving this a "10" rating.

EE - I agree, and there's a few more than just Stolen shoes that don't jive with me - and it's probably more in the organization of the album itself. The first half is packed dense with incredible tracks that reveal themselves as such instantly. Maybe i'd be more willing to give every track a chance if it didn't seem like your typical tail-end album burn out. I'm trying...listening to "Echo/Always On/EZ Con" and am warming to the alternating slowness/weirdness...so there's hope that a few weeks from now this will end up being a 10 afterall.