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http://www.rollingstone.com/assets/images/album_review/662bf4a69dd54e1e19346c58d8fc1e3ac8bc7d09.jpeg American Goldwing

Blitzen Trapper

American Goldwing

Sub Pop
Rolling Stone: star rating
Community: star rating
5 3 0
September 13, 2011

"Guess I left the world behind," Eric Earley sings on the sixth Blitzen Trapper record. No doubt: The Portlandians play Nineties Americana rock like Wilco if they'd never upended the genre on Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. It's a simplistic but intoxicating roots fantasy - full of Dylan mysticism, spidery acoustic Dead jamming, tasty 1970s rock moves and evocations of high-plains drifters with itchy trigger fingers drinking from jam jars. Earley has Jeff Tweedy's bed-headed wonderment, and every steel guitar filament or harmonica blast is perfectly placed; modern references are so rare that when they roll out a funk tinged tune called "Astronaut," it's almost unnerving-like someone whipping out an iPhone in a Western.

Listen to "American Goldwing":

Related:
Breaking Artist: Blitzen Trapper
Photos: Bonaroo 2010

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