Blitzen Trapper might as well start adding “the hardest working band in showbusiness” to their name. After releasing the fantastic American Goldwing last year and co-headlining a tour with Dawes, just about playing ever SXSW show humanly possible and getting prepped to go on another tour this year, Blitzen Trapper released a 7-inch for Record Store Day 2012 featuring a classic take on “Hey Joe” and “Skirts on Fire” an unreleased song from the American Goldwing sessions. Here, “Skirts on Fire” sounds like a lost cut off of Grateful Dead’s Workingman’s Dead, a catchy countrified number that deserves to be heard by everyone. So do yourself a favor and pick up the exclusive yellow vinyl (there are only 1800 in circulation) and happy Record Store Day!
Audio
There are two ways that you can be a great singer, one is more reliant on technical ability; the vocal range, the timbre (lets call this the Paul McCartney side for the sake of argument) and the latter is perhaps even harder, to live in your songs to make the experience both universal and truly heartfelt. Like Lennon, Levon Helm was among the latter and he left an indelible mark on American rock music with his plaintive gruff vocals. When you think of The Band, you immediately think of songs like “The Weight”, “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down”, “Up On Cripple Creek”, and “Ophelia”. All of which had Levon Helm’s Arkansas bred hands all over them. Yet this performance of “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down” might be his finest moment, it would be simple to marvel alone at his ability as a drummer to sing as well as he played, but moreover you get the sense that Levon Helm was in the Civil War himself, a marvel against time ( in part due to Robbie Robertson’s fine lyrics) come to represent the ever burning hope of man. Robertson made a point to focus not on what the war’s issues were, but the theme of what war does. This is Levon Helm’s legacy, and the world will be lit a little dimmer without him in it.
In todays music, psychedelia usually falls victim to being too out there (see chillwave, electronica, trance) or an homage with little originality. Here though Spiritualized makes the most of taking up the mantle of psychedelic rock that The Beatles left in 1968 (The lack of a statement with the album cover is a fitting callback to The Beatles own White Album) with “Little Girl”, there are beautiful strings that haven’t felt so delightfully strange in an arrangement since “I Am The Walrus” and a great rousing chord progression that belies the song’s downcast nature. A tongue in cheek piece of songwriting worthy of Lennon.
Sweet Heart, Sweet Light was released April 16th, 2012 on Fat Possum Records. You can find the digital version on iTunes here .
I hadn’t heard Maps & Atlases until I received a tweet from my sister a day ago praising this song as “a barn party of Bon Iver, Toro Y Moi, Fleet Foxes, and New Villager”. I wasn’t the biggest fan of New Villager but I gave it a shot anyway. The song may well be one of 2012’s best, a gorgeous multilayered vocal with just the most subtle hint of autotune (no small feat) and a muted guitar rhythm that explodes into polyphony worthy of the most daring of Bon Iver tunes. Don’t miss this one.
Beware and Be Grateful was released on April 17th, 2012 on Barsuk Records. You can find the vinyl on Insound here, and the digital version on iTunes here .
The Art of the Mixtape 