Blitzen Trapper - Koko, London - 12/11/07

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There’s always a band that people talk about and all your cool friends know about but you’ve still never heard of. Isn’t there? Yes there is. Blitzen Trapper are mine. Supporters of Two Gallants this time round, I’d never heard them. But three albums in – two self-released, one on Sub Pop – and some proper credibility have got them pockets of mockery that ‘cult’ bands seem to demand in a you-only-like-them-because-no-ones-ever-heard-of-them kind of way. They’ve also a devoted following.

This is fair. On occasion, they rock. On other occasions, they roll. Sometimes they drum out medium pace Americana, or just play some folk tunes. They are a living, breathing example of what happens when you’ve no-one piling pressure on your flow and tightening up your stuff. Their consistency is non-existent except in everything they do being ‘good’; and they are all the better for it.

It’s refreshing indeed to see them doing their thing. Having listened extensively to new record ‘Wild Mountain Nation’, you’d struggle to pin them down. They’ve got riffs, like Nirvana; quirky country numbers, like the softer White Stripes moments; and songs like ‘Devils A-Go-Go’, that are so funked up and rocked out in mangled time signatures that the Arctic Monkeys wouldn’t even understand.

More importantly tonight, they’re like a whirlwind in a desert, clearing the mess for Two Gallants, who became the calm after the storm. And Two Gallants rocked, so that tells its own story.