Music Review: Blitzen Trapper, “Furr”
Rating: 87
Blitzen Trapper either ignored or didn’t get the standard music industry memo that told them to settle on a groove, find a niche and sit on it. The band’s fourth disc, “Furr,” picks up nicely from the all-over-the-map genre skipping of 2007′s “Wild Mountain Nation,” and the Portland, Ore. band is improving its craft, forging concise melodies shot through with arrangements recallng Traffic, Pavement and a thousand other roads.
“Sleepytime in the Western World” plays like a Grateful Dead song being played by Badfinger, but then singer Eric Earley can lead his band into swooning electro-folk territory on “God + Suicide” or the pounding hard rock of “Fire + Fast Bullets” with equal aplomb. But it’s the unabashed ear candy of “Saturday Nite,” with its multi-layered “sha-la-las,” Fender Rhodes and banjo that will blow minds, mainly because there’s no easy definition for what Blitzen Trapper is committing here, and yet it is gloriously accessible.
Earley can go from easygoing to heart-shredding in nothing flat — the pained emotional wreckage of “Love U” is packed with the kind of screams that Arthur Janov taught John Lennon before the “Plastic Ono Band” album. But then there are moments of sheer beauty surrounding that deathly wail, including the delicate piano ballad “Not Your Lover” and the flute-driven jazz-fusion of “Echo/Always On/EZ Con.” But “Furr” is not about showboating or pretending to be other bands — Blitzen Trapper has created an album that always rings beautifully true.
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