Blitzen Trapper: Furr

The Oregonians of Blitzen Trapper often sounded

like a ray-gun-wielding Grateful Dead cover band on 2007's Wild Mountain

Nation,

so it's no surprise that frontman Eric Earley calls himself a "moonwalking

cowboy" and implores listeners to "leave this world somehow" on the band's

fourth full-length. More surprising is the fact that it isn't all meaningless

science-fiction babble: On its most focused album yet, Blitzen Trapper seems

concerned with the ways a person can escape the terrestrial while staying on

earth. Furr

is a celebration of passion and abandon, featuring teens gone feral,

God-fearing psycho killers, and other characters engulfed by the dangerous,

antisocial forces of love, dance, God, and suicide. Throughout, Earley stresses

how primal instinct magnifies rather than destroys identity, so it makes a kind of

unexpected sense that these 12 roots-rocking songs come with less blippy

weirdness and fewer noisy sideshows than before. Blitzen Trapper is just acting

natural: The Neil Young and Beatles influences are laid bare, the quirkiness is

now more tuneful than cerebral, and the band has surrendered to the basic human

craving for candied country melodies.