Blitzen Trapper

Using "Dylan” as an adjective is nearly as overused as the terms "green", "global warming" and any acronym introduced to the common vernacular, including "LOL", "OMG", "TTYL" and my least favorite, "DUI".

I'm venturing to say that calling a band or artist Dylanesque is neither meaningful nor accurate, very few people transcend to the same plane of lyrically human existence as Bob Dylan. I'm not trying to accuse those artists of being lesser musicians, you just don't do it - he's too iconic to be replicated.

Nobody remembers Dylan for being anything more, or less, than Dylan. He's burned his legacy into the souls and minds of American pop culture forever and nobody can strip him of that. It's both an honor and privilege to be him.

Well, I'm going to break that rule.

Blitzen Trapper, an experimental, Americana rock band based out of Portland, Oregon, earns the right to be considered, Dylanesque.

Ok, well after that pseudo-rant I should have refrained from saying that and rightfully so. Yet, Blitzen Trapper captures one of the essential elements, belonging to a laundry list of elements, that can earn them a right of being Dylanesque.

They create an American experience.

As a beautifully comprehensive score capturing the essence of American folk music… it builds a connection. It’s like Chicken Soup for the Drifter’s Soul. It’s impulsive, passionate and embodies the same spirit that drove pioneers out west.

Trapper is not Dylan, just Dylanesque. They've crafted an art of mimicking a master and being good at it in a way in which they generate their own style. This is most apparent in their 2008 release, Furr, they render themselves as the kind of kids pictured driving cross country soaking in all things this land has to offer: the sky, the woods, the history and the future.

Swimming across all streams of music media, Blitzen Trapper switches veins from being the rootsy acoustic rock, like in the title track Furr about a coming of age 20-something coping with lycanthropy, to a funky brand of melodic pop and back again.

Playing as a sextet (for the math-impaired that's six members), Blitzen Trapper is a vastly talented group of musicians pushing this northwestern movement of rootsy music, alongside bands like Fleet Foxes and Band of Horses into the rest of the music scene.

These will be the artists who spend their life playing the 'grizzly man and the sad man', the one’s left behind by time – torn away from their homes. These are the artists born of the wrong generation, of the wrong century, the ones who should have spent their formidable years living in a cabin on a pond.