Blitzen Trapper
Wild Mountain Nation
Self-released
Portland-area alt-folk/country musicians Blitzen Trapper make no compromises on this album. Unfortunately, this means in many segments their music sounds too disorganized to appeal to a mainstream audience,
While on some tracks "Wild Mountain Nation" provides an interesting fusion of psychedelia and country elements, in places it ends up feeling a little too disorganized, too free-form.
I hasten to emphasize this album is definitely not going to appeal to anyone who insists on sterile, distortion-free, meticulously-arranged music with everything exactly in place.
Still, here and there, it manages to produce something Pink Floyd fans and Willie Nelson devotees can agree on, and that's actually a pretty rare thing.
Sometimes, the net result of the merry sextet's labors is something a bit like an especially folky effort by Beck (as on "Devil's A Go-Go" and "Sci-Fi Kid"); other times it's a bit more like Ben Folds ("Futures and Folly" and "The Green King Sings"); yet other times it's just an odd buffet of sounds with a few words thrown in ("Woof and Warp of the Quiet Giant's Hem") and still other times it's a solid, slow, ale-friendly ballad (as on "Summer Town" and "Country Caravan.")
The album is on balance too dreamy for most country fans and too down-home for most psychedelia fans; thus it is an album only for the rare individual with musical tastes split evenly, either between these two worlds or among these and others.
Blitzen Trapper plays Opolis Sunday with Hold Steady and Illinois. Any serious fan of odd combinations of musical styles would do well to check it out.
-- Adam Scott
Entertainment
'Wild Mountain Nation' dishes up sonic stew from a strange junkyard of music
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