Any visitor to Portland, Oregon knows its residents are so – so, something that it’s almost impossible to put a finger on it. Even after a few moments in the gray confines the strange pride is clearly evident. Go ahead and ask one to define the “urban growth boundary.” They’re proud of their rainy city; arrogantly, a Portlander will tout things like sky trams, bike lanes and craft beer the way someone else might look at robust employment. Whatever it is, there is something almost preternaturally precocious in the water here.
Did I mention that was our clean, clear – very drinkable tap water?
Portland also boasts your city’s creative class. Do the numbers. The starving artist class comes here from all over and that isn’t a fact merely proven with anecdote. The city is literally teeming with refugees from Cleveland, Minneapolis, Atlanta, and even less enlightened vistas than those. Again, ask a Portlander why, and they’ll tell you it has something to do with the proliferation of coffee houses, green spaces, or proximity to the abundant natural world.
The City of Rose’s own Blitzen Trapper proves that there is something unexplainably innate in the coolness of their home; that the swagger is something entirely inborn. After a literal barrage of self-released albums, internet marketing, EP’s, name changes and careful line-up honing, the sextet has emerged like brilliant July from the perpetual Pacific Northwest fog with an opus worthy of broad attention. World, meet the Wild Mountain Nation.
And any adjective beyond the already scrawled hyperbole seems almost trite now. Think of all 384 minutes of the mini-series, “Lonesome Dove” on psilocybin. Or better yet, think of those free-wheeling stories Grandpa told about his ranching days, and how they were far more entertaining than a dozen Louis L’Amour novels. What is measurable and worthy of description is how deep the quality of songwriting is here. Lead trapper Eric Earley seems to pen his songs with both a tongue-in-cheek type of American folk tale and an urbanite’s effortless ability to cross genre. While Wild Mountain Nation is ostensibly forged of country rock, it defies that definition at every turn. If the title song (impossibly ear grabbing among others similarly impossible, like say, “Miss Spiritual Tramp”) isn’t on every critics top-10 list at the close of 2007, then it is nothing short of a crime.
Of course though, it may be more apropos of a Portland band to play out their genius in comfortable, damp obscurity. |