Blitzen Trapper, VII

Reviewed by: Nate Adams

Experiments are designed to fail. In the scientific process, “experiment” means testing an idea and, hoping the idea holds water while expecting it not to. Experiment is how good ideas become great ideas, how big problems become smaller, solvable problems.

Every description of Blitzen Trapper includes the words “experimental country,” suggesting that the band’s members are trying to push the boundaries of what country music is, what it will allow and what it can hold without losing itself. Indeed, the band’s latest album (and its first one not released on Sub Pop since their 2007 breakthrough Wild Mountain Nation), VII, finds the band seeing how much it can pour into a country music box before that box breaks.

If the final goal of VII is to make a new kind of country music, much of it is a failure. The problem with Blitzen Trapper’s take on country is that it is far too rote, far too willing to embrace the genre’s most obvious and well-tread trappings in its pursuit of tweaking the formula. The album lurches from song to song, dragging tired guitar tones and song structures with it. Electronic elements are glued to bar-rock B-sides, hanging out of place and glaring for their garishness. The album’s worst tracks dust off rural come-ons better reserved for “Honky Tonk Badonkadonk” than a one-time next big thing (I’m looking at you, “Oregon Geography,” AKA “The worst song Beck never wrote).

The album’s few successes make the failures all the more glaring. “Earth (Fever Called Love)” succeeds at making a country song that sounds lush and exciting. Mixing a slide guitar with a string arrangement worthy of the Avalanches, BT crafts a song that is unlike any other in the genre. “Heart Attack” is faithful guitar stomper that nearly justifies every failed rocker before it: if the band can make a song as fun and effortless as this, why not shoot for it every time?

Failure is to be expected when experimenting and VII has got it in spades. Yet there remain enough promise in the album’s best tracks to hope Blitzen Trapper try their beat-country again.

Rating: No Comment