VII (2013)

I am indistinguishable from my memories, inseparable from this place I've always lived. Songs made of rhymes and these rhymes like maps to the bizarre hinterlands of what we know and love. This is Blitzen Trapper's seventh record for the books, another bizarre string of tales and touchstones, more beats and banjos by far than anything to date, since, well we figured a straight line between two points is preferable. At this point the road is home and home is home, which is to say there is no home left for me because at a certain point you can never go home as the old adage seems to more than imply.

The pac-northwest is a place of synthesis, a backwater for slag and leftovers, culturally speaking, and VII like this, like all my records it's a synthesis of a whole mess of things. Our music, lovingly called 'Rocky Mountain Whoop-ass', a term itself coined by close associates to refer to what we play though our particular mountains are a more volcanic spur of the Rockies and so more solitary, brings together the strut, the twist, the headbang and the hillbilly tap, though in some cases it merely makes people want to drink or procreate. I feel confident this genre will, if not become de facto will perform as an at least marginally amusing handle for music writers with any interest.