Blitzen Trapper is having a pretty good year. The self-proclaimed can of Rocky Mountain Whoop Ass celebrated its 10th anniversary with a deluxe reissue of the band's 2003 debut, Blitzen Trapper, back in April and a month later, band multi-instrumentalist Marty Marquis released an all-synthesizer version of Ty Segall’s Goodbye Bread, a slant nod to Blitzen Trapper’s "American" melting pot of genres as well as a homage to Wendy Carlos’ 1968 experiment Switched-On Bach. Now they’re back with something like a return to form in their seventh full-length—and first for new label Vagrant—simply titled VII.
Blitzen Trapper set a standard for much of their unpredictable course with both their debut and sophomore album, Field Rexx. The latter, in particular, is all over the place, ranging from 8-bit honky-tonk to 20-year-old recordings of Eric’s father, James, a bluegrass musician. Wild Mountain Nation continued on that wildly inventive trajectory, emphasizing hair-metal freakouts (“Miss Spiritual Tramp”) and disjointed mindfucks (“Woof & Warp of the Quiet Giant’s Hem”) over Pavement and the Stooges; but the the title track’s conversational guitars and easy beat is what signed the band to Sub Pop. At that point, all bets were off, even for them. Follow-up Furr, arguably their most accessible effort to date, favored pedal steel and folksy harmonies; Destroyer of the Void indulged in prog-rock references to early Queen; and American Goldwing was more or less a long haul down classic rock’s collective memory lane.
That leaves us at VII, which opens with suggestive, if routine, radio tuning static: Blitzen Trapper are finding their way back, as it turns out to somewhere between Nation and Furr. The harmonica bleats, walking bass line, and vivid imagery are familiar, but it’s still good to hear the band fire up their Stevie Wonder stomp again. “[VII] has a certain hip-shaking funk to it,” Earley said in an interview over the summer, and Blitzen Trapper do seem to be having the most fun when they’re banging away on the clavinet in “Drive On Up.” Their frontman recruits gospel singer Liz Vice to reinforce his preacherly idioms—“There ain’t no tie like the tie that binds/ There ain’t no way like the way divine”, an allusion to Earley Senior, who taught his son the all-importance of “faith” and “playing stringed instruments”—on “Shine On", again for a briefly soulful interlude on “Neck Tatts, Cadillacs” and elsewhere for backing vocals. It’s a nice change, but it's not nearly the same as Blitzen Trapper’s earlier innovation.
“Ever Loved Once” is catchy enough, with all the fixings for another “Wild Mountain Nation.” The rest of VII doesn’t live up to its potential. The most interesting ideas aren’t developed into anything more than ear-pricking novelty, which used to be almost all they did. A younger Blitzen Trapper would have taken these threads and ran with them. Maybe they’d wind up unraveling the damn thing, but at least they tried; more often than not they actually pulled it off. Now that they’re playing it safe, right down to the album title, there’s not much to dig into, much less plow through. Like the protagonist of “Furr", they’ve forgone running with the wolves, and lost an awesome part of themselves in the process.
