New Music: Blitzen Trapper: "Jericho" / "Badger's Black Brigade" (Daytrotter Session)
Their recent album Wild Mountain Nation is full of quick 180s and general genre befuddlement, and already Blitzen Trapper are bored with the songs. I'm attached to the album versions of the tunes performed at a recent Daytrotter Session, but I'm nonetheless unsurprised that they felt the need to mess with them. If you're still digesting the originals, allow me to point you toward this performance of "Jericho", a Wild Mountain Nation outtake leaked to blogs some time ago and a hidden grenade in the band's repertoire. It's sharp vocal harmonies and dusty, loping rhythm is a not-so-distant cousin to Neil Young's "Heart of Gold", with only a lonely purple keyboard tone and a pitch-perfect guitar-echo crescendo to discern it from the at the oldies' side of the dial.
The other big surprise is how "Badger's Black Brigade" has grown from the out-like-a-lamb finale to Wild Mountain Nation to what sounds lonely enough to be a live transmission from the last country and western bar at the edge of the world (even throwing in some "howling" from the band). Again, I don't know why I'm shocked at how resilient these songs are, but Blitzen Trapper seem to promise endless detours every time they put the truck in drive.
MP3s:> Blitzen Trapper: Daytrotter Session
[original from Wild Mountain Nation; out now on Lidkercow Ltd.]