Blitzen Trapper
All Across This Land (Vagrant)
Blitzen Trapper have always worn their ’70s rock influences on their sleeves, but with their latest effort, All Across This Land, the Portland band may have finally crossed over from kitschy alt-country to the kind of cliched FM radio fare usually reserved for pickup truck commercials.
All Across This Land is Blitzen Trapper’s eighth full length album, and gone is the rollicking jangle and weirdness of the band’s early work that help propel 2007’s Wild Mountain Nation and 2008’s Furr to much acclaim.
Whereas the band’s early work helped bring relevance to their Southern rock influences through their experimentation with synthesizers and drum machines, no such creative impulses are present on All Across This Land.
Instead, Blitzen Trapper travel down the well-worn path of banal, formulaic radio rock.
The title track kicks off with a “Woo Hoo” that could have been sampled from The Steve Miller Band, while “Mystery and Wonder” cranks the cheese to 11 with lines like “Mystery and wonder / If we only had each other / Mystery and wonder / Is there lighting without thunder?”. Had Tom Petty wrote “Rock and Roll (Was Made For You)”, he would have had enough good sense to make sure it never left the studio.
There’s nothing on All Across This Land that wasn’t done better decades earlier by the likes of everyone from John Mellencamp to John Denver. After eight albums, Blitzen Trapper appear content to take the money and run.
Rating: 2.5 out of 5
