1. Blitzen Trapper's folky, funky and sometimes rocking music gives off the vibe of hiking through the woods in Forest Park near Portland, Ore., where the band is from.
Blitzen Trapper's lead songwriter and singer, Eric Earley, explained the reason behind that to The World-Herald. He said he grew up in the Pacific Northwest. “I think it's one of those things where you are influenced by where you're from, whether you like it or not. I do use a lot of imagery and narratives from around here, where I live.”
2. The band's name references a reindeer and school supplies. Earley explained that a girl in his seventh-grade class had a Trapper Keeper with Santa and his reindeer on it.
“She called it her ‘Blitzen Trapper' because Blitzen was her favorite reindeer. That always stuck with me for some reason,” Earley told Spin magazine.
3. Those pretty harmonies. Whether it's on the songs “Destroyer of the Void” or “The Tree” (with Alela Diane), the layered vocals the band sometimes employs are just so pretty. Practically churchlike, even if the lyrics are about weird stuff.
4. Speaking of strangeness, Blitzen Trapper has that one covered. “Furr” was about a guy turning into a wolf and howling at the moon. “Black River Killer” was about an Old-West style serial killer. And what about the lyric “raised a family out of earth and electricity” on the song “The Tailor,” which is on the band's latest full-length CD, “Destroyer of the Void”?
Where does all that stuff come from?
“The imagery that I like to use is definitely in the mythical realm,” Earley said. “I read a lot of fantasy and a lot of magical realism stuff. I also read a lot of American literature. For me, I'm stealing things from books — stealing ways of saying things or focusing in on aspects that are important to me and are important right now to talk about.”
5. Every once in a while, they get funky. Amid folky jams such as “The Man Who Would Speak True” and “Black River Killer,” the band gets (gasp) danceable and jams about having a great time on “Saturday Nite” or channel '70s-era Elton John on “Lover Leave Me Drowning.”
— Kevin Coffey
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