Blitzen Trapper

For a buzz band, Blitzen Trapper is extremely modest. Instead of trying to overwhelm listeners with their awesomeness, singer-songwriter Eric Earley and crew create casually adventurous tracks that draw from American music in ways that seem both familiar and fresh.

“Sleepy Time in the Western World” opens the album with an organ line straight off of Blonde on Blonde, yet its lyrics and shambolic arrangement seem more interested in tomorrow than yesterday. Likewise, the gentle title track is contemporized by subtle sound effects and lines that meld folk traditionalism and modernist abstraction: “You can wear your fur/Like a river on fire/But you better be sure/If you’re making God a liar.”

Few discs as anticipated as this one are so low-key—or so deserving of the buzz that preceded them.