Album Review: Wild and Reckless by Blitzen Trapper

Blitzen Trapper's new album Wild & Reckless is a passable collection of weathered folk- and country-rock jams. That's the Blitzen Trapper way. It was true of their last album, 2015's All Across This Land. And it was true of the one before that, 2013's VII. You can say the same thing about ….

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Described by frontman Eric Earley as both a companion to and extension of their acclaimed 2008 release Furr, Wild & Reckless was born out of Blitzen Trapper's rock opera of the same name, which debuted in their hometown of Portland, Oregon in 2016. A nostalgia-driven cautionary tale of corruption, drugs, heartbreak, and science fiction -- think Bonnie and Clyde meets Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas -- the 12-track set includes seven songs from the musical and five new numbers, all of which brood, shimmy, pine, and shake with the distinctive backwoods Laurel Canyon vibe that became the band's forte upon the release of 2011's American Goldwing. That penchant for mounting classic rock tropes onto a country-folk foundation gets the occasional deviation -- the airy "No Man's Land" and the orchestral "Forever" definitely lean toward the musical theater side of the band's oeuvre -- but for the most part, Wild & Reckless eschews the group's more experimental works like Wild Mountain Nation and Destroyer of the Void.

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