“Furr“
from the album Furr
2008
iTunes
One day, while the Oregon-based alt-country band Blitzen Trapper was beginning to record its fourth album, an old piano showed up inside the band’s studio, a converted telegraph office near the Willamette River.
Despite lacking some keys and sounding out of tune, singer and songwriter Eric Earley used the piano to write most of the music for the band’s upcoming Furr.
That, in part, explains why Blitzen Trapper doesn’t sound much like other bands — and seems poised to get its big break about the time it can afford a real piano.
Piano aside, Blitzen Trapper was able to afford more technology this time around. After remaining independent since its birth in 2000, Blitzen Trapper will release Furr Sept. 23, its first album released on the acclaimed Sub Pop record label.
“[Furr] doesn’t have that recorded-in-the-garage sound,” Earley said. “We didn’t use four-track tape this time.”
“The songs are more cohesive,” said Marty Marquis, guitarist and keyboardist. “It’s not so much schizophrenic.”
Schizophrenia is an apt description of the band’s sound. The lo-fi approach that marks all of its records recalls the Rolling Stones’ landmark album Exile on Main Street and makes the music sound slightly muffled, as if the instruments were wrapped in cheesecloth. But through that approach, the vocals and keyboard and drums and guitars meld together, as if they were all the same instrument, aiming at a single end.
In an interview, Earley resisted the urge to define his band’s genre, saying that recent attempts by journalists to compare Blitzen Trapper to Tom Petty, ELO and even Queen mean nothing. “Add them to the list” of hundreds of other musicians the band has been compared to, he said.
Making the move to Sub Pop involved a little trepidation, Marquis said. In some music scenes, like Blitzen Trapper’s homebase of Portland, fans and industry insiders start to shun musicians who move to big labels rather than staying within the do-it-yourself ethos of the indies.
“When we were teenagers, Sub Pop was legendary,” Marquis said. “So far, so good. We’re excited to see what [Sub Pop] can do.”