Blitzen Trapper - Furr

by Dont just do something stand there on Thu, 2008/09/18 - 12:39pm Post to Twitter

Furr is Blitzen Trapper’s first release for Sub Pop, a label that has begun to reshape its sound into something pretty and pastoral, especially when you consider this is the label that released Nirvana’s Bleach and Mudhoney’s self-titled debut a little less than 20 years ago.

In its roster now are bands like Fleet Foxes, Band of Horses, Iron & Wine, Grand Archives and Loney, Dear. So it should come as no surprise that Furr is significantly less skronky than last year’s Wild Mountain Nation, a loose, lo-fi affair that harkened as much to Pavement as it did to alt.country and Deliverance-style banjo pickin’.

Still self-recorded by Blitzen’s singer/songwriter/producer, Eric Earley, Furr’s edges are more rounded. Even the songs with a runaway-train-falling-off-the-tracks approach (“Love U,” “Fire + Fast Bullets”) feel quieter and more restrained. And in between touring, Earley must have been listening to a lot of Dylan, because that troubadour’s influence can be felt all over this record—lyrically, melodically and even in Earley’s intonation.

For a band like Blitzen Trapper, it’s dangerous to “mature,” especially when what made Wild Mountain Nation so fun was its carefree, all-over-the-map aesthetic. But fortunately, maturity suits this Portland band, and the cohesion of Furr more than makes up for any real or perceived lack of spontaneity.

The title track is the keystone of the album, a warm folk song featuring only Earley’s voice and guitar (and a little harmonica) that revels in the band’s less noisy, more melodic new direction. Earley starts the song as a 17-year-old who wanders into the woods, hears the howling of a wolf and decides to join the pack: “So from the cliffs and highest hill we would gladly get our fill/Howling endlessly and shrilly at the dawn/ And I lost the taste for judging right from wrong/ For my flesh had turn to fur.”

The second verse finds the narrator on his 23rd birthday, the day he meets a girl similarly wandering in the woods and settles down on a farm with her to raise children. The fur has become skin again, and the narrator is now in a world “I confess I do not know.”

It’s a superbly written song, one I’ve listened to over and over. It works as a metaphor for all the various ways a man goes off to sow his wild oats (going to college, not going to college, starting a band, etc.), then eventually settles down. But the transition is never easy. It’s hard to shake that yearning for the freedom of the prodigal years. Still, Earley advises, “If you’re gonna get made, don’t be afraid of what you’ve learned.”

“Lady on the Water” and “Not Your Lover” are similarly mellow, the latter using a rickety old piano that found a place on several tunes, mostly to their betterment.

Blitzen Trapper hasn’t completely forgotten its past. Opener “Sleepytime in the Western World” melds old and new Blitzen, and “War on Machines” reminds me a lot of “Wild Mountain Nation,” not a bad thing. The band has found a way to refine and hone without becoming boring.

Furr is an album that with each listen may have you reconfiguring your top 20 list of 2008. And then your top 15. And your top 10.

mp3: Blitzen Trapper - Furr

(also at The Other Paper)