It’s always great to see Portland bands tearing up Sasquatch!, and it felt Blitzen Trapper would be no exception. The band’s rootsy, down-home appeal has always been warmly received in the Pacific Northwest, making it fitting they’d be performing on the stage that sits directly above the magnificent Gorge.
Appropriately, they opened with their folk rock favorite “Black River Killer,” and continued on with several of the early hits that defined their sound. Things started to concern me, however, as they started playing songs from their newest album, American Goldwing, a record I still hadn’t heard anything from yet. The group was trying to pull off a more rockin’ attitude, and the lead singer began altering and speeding up his voice to match it. Suddenly the show was much less organic than it had been at the start, and the band was livelier, in both their actions and music, than I’d ever seen them before. I turned to my friend in disbelief and said, “What’s going on here? This sounds like disco Dead!”
Thankfully, things returned to normal not long after, and the band began playing more of their old songs. It seems Blitzen Trapper only have a few new tracks in their catalogue that stray from their signature sound, and that’s good news to me. Sure, I definitely think change and modification is necessary for just about any band out there, but these local boys have now given us a solid twelve years of their fantastic music. Too much variation from it would probably leave us dedicated fans a bit heartbroken.
