Blitzen Trapper
Where The Rifle Casings Lie With Underbrush
Jul 13, 2009
Words by Sean Moeller
Illustration by Johnnie Cluney
Sound engineering by Mike Gentry
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Welcome to Daytrotter
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Sleepytime In The Western W…
original version appears on Furr
We sometimes open sets with this song, which is a sort of anthem celebrating the decline of the West, or more accurately, the demise of the prevailing concept of "The Western World" in recent years. Why celebrate? Because in order to be refreshed we all must sleep at times. And another song is embedded within this anthem—the narrator is now asleep and dreaming maybe? It's a little baroque folklet about waking and trying to speak but in place of words birds swirling up out of your throat. And then a guitar figure to describe the movement of these birds.
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Black River Killer
original version appears on Furr
A lot has been written about this song already; it's a murder ballad in which traditions of both cowboy music and west coast hip hop are deployed along with certain intriguing textual ambiguities. The killer is booked "on a whim"—does this have anything at all to do with the dead girl described in the opening lines? No one knows. But after being mysteriously released he kills in earnest yet still hopes to hold "the keys to the kingdom" some day. And at a certain point the sheriff uses the killer's words in his lecture—what of this? Also, note the killer's mispronunciation of "Oregon".
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Echo
original version appears on Furr
This is a melancholy love song done sparely with the exception of a lush sort of interregnum between the two short verses. Does love leave any trace? Asking this question is justifiable in the awkward wake of a sticky break up: Are we to be friends, or must we vanish away from each other? But also on a deeper plane: Is love a durable enough material for building something that lasts? And why are we obsessed with leaving traces, legacies and the like anyway?
The video for Blitzen Trapper's newest single, "Black River Killer," features a studio audience of a talk show all wearing a version of the same horrible mask - one of composure mixed with a sadistic smirk and gray, penetrating eyes. They sit stoically through the early parts of the killer's story, a plight that is influenced almost solely by his inability to overrule the quick work of the devil and his insatiable hunger for merciless, random murder. When the explanation is finally out, unraveled like a roll of carpeting - a history of needless, remorseless violence that cannot be slowed or dissuaded - they aggressively call for his head -- the same kind of violence to be done to the killer that he inflicted with knives and pistols. The audience is angry and thirsty for what it would call justice, but what the scene, full of whooping and crazed body language, really goes to show is the same natural inclinations for homicidal tendencies in all human beings. Some are just more "right" than others. Some of these tendencies are just looked at as the less crooked kinds, but it's a fine line that one only tends to see when they've been pushed. Portland's Blitzen Trapper find many different ways to bring us into its wild mountain nation - one that now, even after the Daytrotter record-breaking fourth visit here, still holds new looks, insights and dimensions to explore. It's a thick underbrush of vegetation which has grown over the countless rifle shell casings that unleashed the slugs that felled men and buffalo, whatever was out there moving and could be eaten by the scrawny prospectors and settlers. It's an underbrush that grows out of soil that been piled upon itself, layer-by-layer of compost and decaying carcasses, covering up arrowheads chiseled out of soft rocks by the natives who lived their previously. It's a land that does not exist on its clear boundaries - of men who have it all placed and agreed upon - but as a place that drifts like the map-less and still remains true to very earthy ideals, the kinds that sometimes come back and bite you. They play into the recognized polarities that lie as bedmates in the souls of every living soul, representing the killer/survivor and the civilized/broken. Most find that over time they've either tamed or replaced the urges and the desirous lusts for mixing it up, for stirring trouble and for living so ruggedly and without limitations that they are nearly outcasts from the buttoned-down society that prides itself of sleek horsepower, plastic and its own material greed. Lead singer and songwriter Eric Earley upends this precarious, swinging pendulum and throws it out there like a pair of dice for the intervening fates to sort out in nearly every song on each of the band's incredible albums. We encounter so many unstable men, wrestling with the most natural forces that they have brewing within their ribcages, knocking against their stomachs and spines and trying to reconcile them with this updated way that people are supposed to live. It just may not be the best way for all. Some people are better off dealing with their imbalances way out yonder, beyond the city limits, with no one else to talk to but the ghosts and the hawks, maybe the livestock and the raccoons if they're lucky. They'd prefer the simple existence that doesn't tense them up into wrecking balls, but does make their palms and shoulder muscles as hard as pavement and statues. The wild man can still lurk inside, not really suppressed or hidden, just not loaded, not cocked, not anxious to reach out and meet anyone. Sometimes things get complicated when the mountain men meet midtown and the smell of straw and wood smoke fades to exhaust and depression.
Blitzen Trapper Official Site
Blitzen Trapper's Debut Daytrotter Session
Blitzen Trapper's Second Daytrotter Session
Blitzen Trapper's Third Daytrotter Session
Sub Pop Records
