Blitzen Trapper - Field Rexx

Any good band knows that you can’t succeed without a degree of variation. A mix of pace, an occasional ballad, the short novelty songs - they'll all be found amongst the best of albums. This is because nobody wants an album of 13 identical songs. Well Blitzen Trapper have pulled out all stops to ensure they’re bursting with variety. In fact you could easily mistake this for a compilation. Each song seems to come under a different genre. For every offering they dip their hands into a pool of influences, notably country, rock, folk, blues and pop and emerge with a brand new sound. The band, hailing from one of the united states, are relatively unknown so your chances of finding this record are slim. However if you do come across it, it’s definitely worth the second glance. It contains the slow (concrete heaven), the fast (moving minors over country lines), a ballad (dreamers and giants) the teasingly short (love I explain!) and even random excerpts from some crazy sounding old man – all the hallmarks of a great album. Now just to prove a point I’ve picked two different songs for sampling. While mentioning the names of the songs in brackets may have been a meaningless waste of space, the names of these songs should become familiar to you in no time.

Summer Twin – This is one of those chilled out, soothing sort of songs. It steps up the excitement in small increments, but never gets out of hand. That is of course if you don’t include the instrumental solos, complete with whistles

Asleep For Days – All that talk about variation and then I go and pick two of the more moderate songs. Ah well, at least it shouldn’t stop you from enjoying them. Besides, these songs sound good in isolation. Some of the others sound a bit lost when out of the collective. This song made it in on the sing along principle. If it’s stuck in my head it must have something going for it