"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

“Everyday People”

"Everyday People" managed to trailblaze in two different ways -- it was one of the first pop hits to deal with the subject of racial harmony, and it utilized Larry Graham's "slap" technique on the bass guitar, which would soon be copied by countless other bassists. Graham once said about his pulsating style, "I'd never done that before … that's where the freedom of creativity came in for the band, that we'd be allowed to do that." In 1978, the song's line "Different strokes for different folks" would be borrowed for the title of the hit television show Diff'rent Strokes.