Monday, July 25, 2011
Blitzen Trapper, with Ages and Ages, Friday at the Riot Room
Posted
by April Fleming on
Mon, Jul 25, 2011 at 10:36 AM
After a week of our temperature hovering unbearably around the 100-degree mark and with no end in sight, Portland's rainy gloom is starting to seem like a pretty tolerable alternative. Right now, I'd take a month without sun to not have to sweat while I'm trying to sleep.
Both bands on Friday's Riot Room bill hailed from lucky, temperate Portland. The evening's show started off with the folky, tent-revival rock of Ages and Ages, a sprawling act featuring male and female backup singers, lots of hand claps, brass and even spurs. Yes, spurs apparently make a nice little tinkly percussion piece. Ages and Ages' set began slowly and was almost too mellow and sleepy until frontman Tim Perry came offstage into the crowd, saying, "This is my first time in Kansas City. I want to touch you." He managed to close that pesky 3-foot gap between the crowd and the stage, and that small gesture seemed to loosen up both the crowd and the band, waking everyone up. The band's best song was "No Nostalgia," a great, jangly summer song sung almost entirely by the whole band. The crowd roused along with the temperature, leading backup vocalist Graham Mackenzie, drenched in sweat, to ask, "Is this normal?"
After a short setup, Blitzen Trapper blasted through the heat, which had become thick, opening up with the '70s guitar rock number "Fire and Fast Bullets," off
Furr, the band's most highly acclaimed record. The band wears its nostalgia on its sleeve, looking back at a time when a Moog, lengthy guitar riffs, curly hair, and cowbells (of course) were standard issue. The heavy influences are readily apparent in the live show: the Grateful Dead, Rolling Stones, Cream and, of course, Bob Dylan. It definitely felt nostalgic to me, almost like getting to watch a band out of another era. Frontman Eric Earley's voice often sounds like a young Dylan, and he even occasionally busts out that harmonica neck-strap thing. Also, like Dylan, he is a pretty calm presence onstage, though the sound being produced is a big one. The band is extremely well-seasoned, having toured basically nonstop since the release of 2007's
Wild Mountain Nation.
The show was a blend of the band's rowdier songs from the most recent three albums, including a few selections from the soon-to-be released
American Goldwing, along with a few of the milder, folkier songs peppered in the mix. The crowd was receptive and insistent, yelling song requests and jokes to the band onstage. A little prodding did get a request filled for "Laughing Lover" and a couple of laughs about a cowbell, which keyboardist/man-of-all-trades Marty Marquis (who does look quite a bit like Will Ferrell in the cowbell sketch) joked he was holding back on because he "broke his finger cowbelling too much" before. It was a satisfyingly long outing -- nearly an hour and a half -- and the crowd and band left shiny and sticky from sweat.
Blitzen Trapper set list:
Fire and Fast Bullets
Love and Hate
Destroyer of the Void
Furr
Takin' It Easy Too Long
God and Suicide
Fletcher
Dragon's Song
Saturday Nite
MST 3K
Final Dance
Evening Star
Black River Killer
Love the Way You Walk Away
American Goldwing
Sleepytime in the Western World
Big Black Bird
Laughing Lover
Gold for Bread
Street Fightin' Sun
Wild Mountain Nation
Texaco
Tags: ages and ages, blitzen trapper
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