Blitzen Trapper: Furr

Blitzen Trapper: Furr

2008

Sub Pop Records

Format I Own it On: Compact Disc

Track Listing: 1. Sleepytime in the Western World  2. Gold for Bread  3. Furr  4.God & Suicide
 5. Fire & Fast Bullets  6. Saturday Nite  7. Black River Killer  8. Not Your Lover  9. Love U  10. War on Machines  11. Stolen Shoes & A Rifle  12. Echo/Always On/EZ Con  13. Lady on the Water



I guess I came in pretty late to these guys...I totally spaced their highly acclaimed "Wild Mountain Nation" album...

 

I started listening to them with 2008's "Furr" after being impressed by watching the video for the title track on MTV...

(I think I originally saw it on "Subterranean" which is the program 120 minutes morphed into...)

Anyway, I can recall watching the "Furr" video and being taken aback by its unabashed Dylan-ness...I usually have a pretty low tolerance for fake Dylan, but these guys just happened to nail not just the sound, but the spirit, of it...The folksy melody and the bizarre story about a guy who joins a pack of wild dogs convinced me I just had to check it out...

I eventually picked up a copy at the Zia Records in Tucson, AZ (pictured above). The album was a lot more diverse than I was expecting, yet for all its range it always seems to stick to a slightly-spacey, yet convincingly woodsy country-rock sound...Which helped me realize how rangy the genre actually is..They go from  the lonesome piano pop of "Not Your Lover" which wouldn't sound out of place on Neil Young's "After the Gold Rush", to the shambling backwoods lo-fi of  "Love U" to "War on Machines" which is a dead ringer for "Being There" era Wilco...

I guess what I'm trying to say is, it's all over the map, but the map never leaves the country...They even come up with some interesting new combinations like "Black River Killer" which seems to connect the dots between dust bowl murder ballad and 90's gangsta rap...



I actually hadn't heard this album in a long time...See, shortly after I got it, it became one of my wife's favorites and she kind of played it into the ground for me...So the mere intro to "Sleepytime in the Western World'  made me cringe a little...(So, I guess if you're looking for a good record to pick up for your wife or girlfriend, this might not be a bad choice....)...But I got to take a big break from it and I can again appreciate what a cool record this is...

So let's check out "Furr" by Blitzen Trapper...