BrightestYoungThings: Minorly Delayed: Blitzen Trapper @ Black Cat

all photos: Lexie Moreland from last time.

I don’t know why I didn’t like Blitzen Trapper on Monday. I have their albums and love them. They played all the songs I wanted to hear with ease and flair and all that good stuff. There was just something missing, but I think that might have more to do with me than their actual performance. I’ve been going to a lot of shows lately; like, too many. Monday night’s came at the end of a week where I literally spent 5 out of 7 nights at venues, getting my eardrums blown out, watching ridiculous guitar playing and hearing epic build-ups. I don’t really know what I was expecting to find in a live version of Blitzen Trapper but I think I was looking for entirely the wrong thing.

The opener Alela Diane just released a pretty album on Rough Trade and her music was indeed pretty, if not generally the kind of thing I’m into. She apparently likes Joanna Newsom a lot, since sometimes she sounds like that. I’m pretty sure she’s a big Bon Iver fan, because a lot of her stuff sounds like that, plus yodeling. I don’t know, I’m not really the guy to impress with this kind of thing but everyone else there seemed to like her so I guess that’s fine.

Blitzen Trapper came on sometime around 10:15 to a totally sold out crowd. They tore through a sizeable chunk of their new album (one of the highlights being “Not Your Lover,” with two band members being responsible only for harmony duty) and included some switched-up versions of tracks of Wild Mountain Nation. One of the more interesting things the band chose to go with was an acoustic mini-set dead smack in the middle where frontman Eric Earley played, among others, his “grandmother’s favorite song” (a traditional entitled “Cocaine”) and a sublime version of “Furr.” The tail end of the set was a little bizarre, with tracks like “Love U” coming off as a bit messy and it not really being clear when one song ended and another began. Songs like “Gold For Bread,” “Sleepytime In The Western World” and “God & Suicide” legitimately rocked and got across that this band really does have chops. Also, I’m just a sucker for dueling harmonic guitar solos.

That’s why I don’t really understand what the problem was. The group was competent, reasonably energetic and played their songs exactly like I thought they probably would. I guess I’ve just gone to such different kinds of shows lately, ones based on spectacle and ambition and that larger-than-life climaxes that I found it weird to watch a band just fucking play their songs. Don’t listen to me, Blitzen Trapper was great. I’m an idiot.

Brightest Young Things

Live DC

Minorly Delayed: Blitzen Trapper @ Black Cat

THURSDAY 3/1

The Saw Doctors @ Fillmore Silver Spring

Previously in Live DC:

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