Blitzen Trapper Furr Vinyl

Blitzen Trapper is the Portland, Oregon-based experimental country and folk rock band, who in 2008 released Furr, its breakthrough album and label debut for Sub Pop. The record was met with universal acclaim, earning praise from the likes of The Guardian, Pitchfork, Paste, AV Club, and Rolling Stone, who in its four-star review called the album "an engaging album full of rootsy beauty." The album would earn the no. 13 spot on Rolling Stone's 50 Best Albums of 2008 later that year.

For the newly  expanded deluxe edition of Furr, Blitzen Trapper have compiled over two LPs worth of material: the original album and twelve rare and previously unreleased tunes. The added songs are from the same recordings that become Furr, with the exception of the "Live at KCRW" tracks, which were recorded during the Furr tour. The songs "War is Placebo," "Booksmart Baby," and "Maybe Baby" appeared as limited-edition singles for Record Store Day in 2009 and 2011. This reissue also features new liner notes from Eric Earley reflecting on the album, as well as a track-by-track description of the bonus songs, and a Q&A with the stage and screen actor Rainn Wilson (of The Office fame).

"It's difficult to remember exactly where my head was in those days, recording Furr in a leaky, dilapidated, pre-boom Portland building, all but condemned, where the migrant workers congregated at the curb outside hoping to get picked up by desperate contractors, the dealers working the opposite corner, two blocks up the Burnside bridge running with pitched tents and sleeping bags all the way to the West Side Mission, the black river sliding by beneath."

For those in the know enough at the time to have heard it when Sub Pop first released Furr in 2008, listeners had to have been underwhelmed by the hit and miss production, the furry overdriven vocals and perilous sounding dubs, all industry-standard production fare now. But the songs must have shone through the noise even then. The stand-out title track recorded on a nearly defunct cassette four-track in one take and mixed on a couple-hundred-dollar PC was almost an afterthought at the time, but its message was real enough: that life consists of change and growth, love and transformation.

"With Furr I was attempting to create my own tiny sonic world of freak folk in order to tell the tale of the Northwest as I remembered it growing up: a misty, empty, bedraggled place of mystery and violence, logging ghost towns and glutted rivers, dark creatures glimpsed from the corner of the eye in the endless evergreen forests where we'd go as teenagers hunting dark spirits, looking for trouble or trying to dodge our troubles back home. That even a few people have found beauty and solace in the stories and sounds on this record over the years is rewarding and astounding, humbling and affirming" - Eric Earley (Portland, Oregon 2018)