While the Blitzen Trapper machine continues to tour the country, new songs fall from it like rusted mufflers; their merch table must look like a neglected pawn shop to those who haven't been following closely. Though there have been one-off singles, multiple Daytrotter sessions, and scads of unreleased material before it, the self-pressed tour release EP includes some would-be singles nearly on par with the their breakthrough Wild Mountain Nation. Though the songs cover familiar ground, among the more arresting sidesteps is "Shoulder Full of You", a placid country ballad that leans heavily on slow acoustic plucking and singer Eric Earley's nature-heavy lyrics, though he uses his most surprising image twice ("Deer tracks on an unmade bed") and pairs "miss you" with "kiss you"; the words seem like placeholders on a track that would otherwise be a promising slow jam for the band.
The rest of the EP's tracks are more typical of the band, with affable melodies that flirt with country as they amble towards circuitous choruses, all brushed with a modern feel by touches like the Moogs in "Going Down" and "Preacher's Sister's Boy". If they feel like a step back from the studiously ADD Nation, well, some of them quite literally are: Even as it gets a spot on both EPs, "Silver Moon" is actually a leftover from the band's scrapped, pre-Nation attempt at recording their third album. (These tracks made the rounds at various blogs at the time, and are likely still floating around online.) This newer version hasn't changed much aside from being a little more lo-fi and comfortable than its studio-bred counterpart. Fans who grab this EP on the band's tour won't be disappointed with these songs, but they're more like a bridge between the band's second and third record than any kind of step forward.
More revealing is the small sampling of tracks Blitzen Trapper have quietly released on iTunes as Live/Acoustic. For all of BT's mercurial rock moves, there's almost another band entirely working underneath here, one that opens their sets with bluegrass traditionals and whose reference points reach back farther than their parent's Neil Young records. Earley's father himself was a bluegrass musician (actual recordings of James Earley can be found on the band's second album, Field Rexx), and when the band explores these roots, they play with a depth and authority that belies the scattershot nature of their albums. The fleet finger-picking of "Shady Grove", an unaccompanied piece with just Earley and guitar that has opened some of the band's shows, has an accomplished and uncanny twang. A cover of Tom Paxton's "The Last Thing on My Mind" is ever better for the harmonies (and harmonica), and new track "Going Wrong" takes normally quirky textures like jaw harp and slide guitar and twists them into deep-space melancholy.
But previously released tracks "Silver Moon" and "Wild Mountain Nation" bow and sag under their own wistfulness without the full band-- lacking the proud guitar-string bends that open "Nation" in particular just seems wrong somehow. It doesn't take three versions of "Silver Moon" to see how the band takes the seeds of Earley's melodies and runs through as many incarnations as they can come up with-- they're all distinctive, but none are quite a moment of epiphany like, say, the version of "Jericho" from the band's first Daytrotter session. Even tireless revision doesn't guarantee transcendent results, but it's good to see the band's many rough drafts. While the grab-bag excitement of Wild Mountain Nation was highly contagious, it would be great to hear the band dig in and play to these untapped strengths...provided they haven't written and recorded their follow-up already.
