![]() ![]() "It's more simple and straightforward a record," he said. "American Goldwing," he said, is "more true to the vision" of how he wants Blitzen Trapper records to sound. "It didn't feel like the record I wanted to make." "We recorded 25, 30 songs, and everybody picked out songs," he explained. The band's last record, 2009's "Destroyer of the Void," was a mostly mellow, though typically solid, affair. "Goldwing" combines the off-the-wall rock freakouts of their breakout third album "Wild Mountain Nation" with the folk-rock melodicism of its followup, 2008's "Furr." ![]() The result, paradoxically, is the most Blitzen Trapper-sounding record yet. ![]() "American Goldwing" was mixed by rock veteran Tchad Blake, who has produced Paul McCartney, Elvis Costello, Soul Coughing, Sheryl Crow and many others. He added that an album's mix makes a bigger difference than many listeners realize. I sent off to get mixed, which is a big deal," said Earley. "I've always recorded, produced, and mixed myself. Letting go also played a part in "American Goldwing's" creation. "When you have nothing to lose in your life anymore," Earley said matter-of-factly, "it will come across on anything you do." This attention didn't prompt a surge in popularity but a steady increase in exposure, and by 2009, the band had signed with Sub Pop and was having its songs featured in television and film. The result garnered, among other accolades, a surprise "Best New Music" nod from Pitchfork. He said this stretch of homelessness, which was "by choice" ("You choose to be homeless in America"), inevitably found its way into "Wild Mountain Nation's" mercurial sound. This narrator could just as easily be Earley, whose drifter instincts have prompted him to live without a permanent home for long stretches of time, including during the writing and recording of the band's third effort, 2007's rambunctious "Wild Mountain Nation." During this period, Earley squatted in an "old telegraph building" and often found himself sleeping by rivers and getting pestered by cops. The title track, named after a Honda motorcycle model, finds its protagonist saying "I left my home and all my money to wrestlin' with the wind." The song "Fletcher," for example, is about a guy who is "in the car drinking whiskey from a jar through his teeth." ("Don't you let ol' Fletcher take the wheel tonight," sings Earley in the chorus). Earley has said that the album is him "trying to hazard a true American nostalgia." Blitzen Trapper has always seemed like a bunch of country/folk/fuzz-rock vagabonds, so perhaps it's fitting that frontman Eric Earley's cellphone reception repeatedly died as the band drove across the deserts of Arizona on their way to a show in New Mexico.Īlso fitting is the new album behind the tour, "American Goldwing," which is full of ramblers, wanderers and drunkards that live only in American rural mythology. ![]()
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