“Blitzen Trap­per” are a six-piece indie rock band based in Port­land, Ore­gon. They are Eric Ear­ley (Vocals and Gui­tar), Erik Menteer (Gui­tar and Keyboard/Piano), Brian Adrian Koch (Drums and Vocals), Michael Van­Pelt (Bass), Drew Laugh­ery (Keyboards/Piano) and Marty Mar­quis (Gui­tars, Key­board and Vocals). Blitzen Trap­per was formed in year 2000 and to date, they have released four full length albums. Their music gen­res are mainly exper­i­men­tal, indie rock, and folk rock.

I really had a good time with Furr. Blitzen Trap­per just made them­selves sound so unique. Think of mod­ern coun­try com­bined with rock ‘n’ roll, i bet you’ll have a good time. And a lit­tle bit of cow­boy influence.

Furr opened with the rather unfor­get­table “Sleep­y­time In The West­ern World”. This song doesn’t really have a cho­rus, the only thing that made it so spe­cial is Eric’s singing and the music that fol­lows through, espe­cially the piano and the per­cus­sions. “Your eye­lids are made of lead, you can’t keep them up, because it’s sleep­y­time, and that’s no crime in the west­ern world…” Blitzen Trap­per already showed what they’re capa­ble of.

I like the gui­tar hooks of “Gold For Bread”, espe­cially in the verse where it has the rock ‘n’ roll and good-time qual­ity. Eric also did a good job here with his singing, though i find the cho­rus slightly funny, “Because i’m run­ning from the end, yeah and it’s inside of my head, on my bed with a lead for the leg, we’re trad­ing gold for bread…” The break also con­tains some cute sounds which you would nor­mally find on arcade games. But hey, Gold For Bread is really good! Way to go Blitzen Trapper.

“Furr” is like a lovely sum­mer track, where it tells the story of a boy turn­ing into a wolf (Based on the lyrics). It sounds fairy-tale like if you lis­ten to the song. I can even imag­ine Eric strum­ming his gui­tar and singing to Furr. This track is more like those where you would hear in an unplugged jam ses­sion. And through­out Furr, Eric sings effort­lessly and full of emo­tion. No won­der Blitzen Trap­per decided to name this album, “Furr”.

“God & Sui­cide” is like a slower tempo ver­sion of Gold For Bread. And i have to say, it might even be bet­ter than Gold For Bread. The music in this track just got it together, and after every verse, Blitzen Trap­per will do the howl­ings together, “Whoo…”. The bass stands out the most here where it’s very con­sis­tent and most of all, sim­ple and memorable.

“Fire & Fast Bul­lets” sounds promis­ing once it opened. The verse is for tempo-building and when the cho­rus comes, Blitzen Trap­per will do their stuffs. Half singing along with Eric, the other har­mo­nized it with their voices. I just like it when they go, “Oh, oh oh…”. Nonethe­less, Fire & Fast Bul­lets is fir­ing me up.

“Sat­ur­day Nite” crazily good! I don’t really know how to describe it, but it’s really good. If you’re hav­ing a down week­end or bad sat­ur­day, stop every­thing and lis­ten to Sat­ur­day Nite now! You’ll thank me later. The whole track feels so light, the piano just get on with it, the drums fol­low, the vocals comes on and off just like that… Awe­some stuff here!

“Black River Killer” is more like a mod­ern coun­try rap rock track. Can’t help but imag­ine Blitzen Trap­per on stage mov­ing their bod­ies and do the things a rap­per would do. Just so hilar­i­ous! On this track, Eric can be heard singing as if he’s speak­ing. And the “squeak­ing” music that comes on after each para­graph of verse, fits in perfectly.

Blitzen Trap­per takes a dif­fer­ent note on bal­lad “Not Your Lover”. The main instru­ment here is piano and Blitzen Trap­per make sure that they do well even if with­out gui­tars and drums. From the lyrics, this song car­ries a sad aspect with it. “In my sleep, i’m not your lover any­more, when i wake, i have to remind myself, that i’m lying on your shore…” Any­way, it’s a good effort!

“Love U” is a loud draggy rock track! Besides those loud draggy music, Eric is also hav­ing a hard time adjust­ing his voice in this track and at some points, he screeches heav­ily. As this track goes, it gets softer near the end. Hon­estly, i don’t think Blitzen Trap­per is com­fort­able singing Love U.

“War On Machines” brings the whole album back to nor­mal and Blitzen Trap­per is again doing what they’re best at, hav­ing fun and rock ‘n’ rolling. The gui­tar on this track has some explo­sive qual­ity with it. Dur­ing the verse, it keeps loop­ing until i find it resem­bles “Hair Don’t Grow” by Annu­als. Blitzen Trap­per man­aged to rock this song out and still keep the coun­try ele­ment in it.

It’s funny how “Stolen Shoes & A Rifle” sounds like ”Good Arms vs. Bad Arms” by Scot­tish band Fright­ened Rab­bit at the begin­ning. It started off with a few instru­ments at a steady pace before sound­ing fuller after the first cho­rus. Later into this track, Blitzen Trap­per can be heard choir­ing. It may not be their best, but it’s still a great effort by them.

“Echo/Always On/EZ Con” has three dif­fer­ent parts. Nor­mally a track like this should have been the clos­ing track of an album. The first part of this song is a melodic piano bal­lad where i love the flute that is being played at some points. The sec­ond part sounds like a mal­func­tioned pho­to­copy­ing machine, which i think is quite weird. Lastly, it’s the dance-like instru­men­tal which show­cases the sound of a flute and how good it can be. I find the last part very good, and i always fast-forward this track to this part. Enjoy!

The final track on Furr is the acoustic “Lady On The Water”. It has some really nice melody but what i like the most is the piano that comes after each verse. Since Eric is busy play­ing the gui­tar and singing, the piano sort of let Eric take a short rest before con­tin­u­ing singing. Just a nice and warm fin­ish to Furr! Lovely!

Rat­ing: Furr con­tin­ues from Wild Moun­tain Nation like a suc­ces­sor. Both albums fare really good and con­tain some good music for their fans and even new lis­ten­ers who just start­ing to explore their music. Fans of coun­try rock are really rec­om­mended to add Blitzen Trap­per to their music shelves as the music writ­ten and com­posed by them are a new era of coun­try rock where you could hear it clearly in Furr, and even Wild Moun­tain Nation. Until today, i don’t fancy coun­try music, but Blitzen Trap­per has made some really good music here. A very, very good job of mod­ern­iz­ing coun­try music so that younger gen­er­a­tion like me enjoy it. There was no regret at all for try­ing Furr, it instantly became one of my favourite albums in 2008. I really like Furr, there­fore i’m giv­ing it 7.6 out of 10.

Stand-Out Tracks (My Picks): Sleep­y­time In The West­ern World, Gold For Bread, Furr, God & Sui­cide, Sat­ur­day Nite, Black River Killer, War On Machines and Echo/Always On/EZ Con.

Cheers!
Dar­ren Tan
Indiesurf.com