Blitzen Trapper - American Goldwing (2011)

Tracklist

01. Might Find It Cheap
02. Fletcher
03. Love the Way You Walk Away
04. Your Crying Eyes
05. My Home Town
06. Girl in a Coat
07. American Goldwing
08. Astronaut
09. Taking It Easy Too Long
10. Street Fighting Sun
11. Stranger in a Strange Land


After nearly a decade of flirtation, Blitzen Trapper finally took the plunge and dove headfirst into the lake in crafting American Goldwing, a straight-up, mid-'70s inspired Southern rock album that fuses the Saturday night swagger of Lynyrd Skynyrd with the stoic peasantry of the Band. Similar in sound and feel to fellow Pacific Northwesterners the Decemberists’ King Is Dead, but sporting a darker patina of authenticity (which is odd, considering neither group has roots in the deep south), American Goldwing comes out of the gate howling with “Might Find It Cheap,” a taut and infectious, summer boot-stomper that sounds tailor-made to buckle the speakers in a second generation Pontiac Firebird. What follows is a lovingly balanced set of rural rockers (“Street Fighting Sun”) and dirt road ballads (“Girl in a Coat”) that sound about as far from the murky introspection of 2010’s Destroyer of the Void as one would expect from a band that continuously tries to reinvent themselves within their own psych-folk/alt-country/indie rock universe, and almost always succeeds.

DOWNLOAD ALBUM [flac]