Guest Writer: Brooks Hays

A lot of artists these days are riffing on the vintage Laurel Canyon alt-folk vibe, but Blitzen Trapper coat their well-crafted version with a unique postmodern veneer, half cabin-in-the woods, half big-city neon lights. As their eclectic, off-the-wall effort Furr demonstrated, and their newest title track confirms, the band takes an epic romp through all manners of psychedelia, prog-rock, and alt-country. Blitzen Trapper seasons their particular brand of Americana folk-rock with a variety of dynamic flavors; it could be the shimmering prog-flare of Bowie, the earnestness of Neil Young, the energy and spunk of Freddie Mercury or the lo-fi spontaneity of Beck in his folkier days.

What I loved so much about Furr was Blitzen Trapper’s ability to switch gears and fast, mimicking Dylan on the title track, then Neil Young precisely and delightfully on “Not Your Lover,” later Queen on the spirited “Saturday Night,” and so on and so forth. Destroyer of the Void finds the band both picking up where they left off and narrowing their focus. Certainly there is still a little of the Ziggy Stardust glam and “Bohemian Rhapsody”-like glitz to color tracks like “Laughing Lover” and “Love and Hate” but the bulk of the album falls back on their most consistent, quieter and largely acoustic, folk-ballad formula – “The Tree” and “Dragon’s Song” are particularly nice examples. Several songs sound like exact extensions of previous tracks, going back to familiar sonic themes and topics. “The Man Who Would Speak True” picks up the backwoods murder ballad where “Black River Killer” left off. “Heaven and Earth” sounds like a “Not Your Lover” reprise. Elsewhere the band continues to meander through the dynamics of epic and metaphoric struggle between good and evil, man and machine, the rural and the urban. On other songs they rediscover both the spiritual and the natural world, touching on ideas of metamorphosis, reincarnation, and Transcendentalism (only this time it’s a tree instead of a wolf).

Blitzen Trapper’s folk-rock pastiche is not forced, or vain, or empty. For brief moments it may prove tedious, but more often than not, it’s immensely interesting, organic, and genuine. The harmonies are rich and beautiful, the acoustic fingerpicking is celestial and nimbly employed, and the words are poetic and deftly weaved, mixing the sentimental simplicity of the hippie-children, back-to-the-landers’ ethic with the word-play and rhythm of a well-versed, coffee-house beatnik. While Destroyer of the Void is not quite as exciting as their last two efforts, it exhibits a band truly finding their comfort zone, still with plenty of room for future exploration, and plenty more stories to tell I’m sure.

Check out Blitzen Trapper’s 2010 tour schedule here.