Blitzen Trapper's eclectic sound has old-time, indie influences

"We'll go from guitar and three-part harmony to heavy, heavy noise, to riff rock," Eric Earley (front) says of his band's shows. (JADE HARRIS)

LOS ANGELES - A Blitzen Trapper show is like a mash-up, one of those cheeky club remixes that blends Destiny's Child and Nirvana to surprising and sublime effect. During a freewheeling set at the Troubadour here in February, the sextet evokes styles as far-flung as Americana and heavy metal.

Members of the Portland, Ore.-based band are as comfortable playing finger-picked guitar and harmonica while covering Tom Paxton's country classic "The Last Thing on My Mind" as they are unleashing guitar riffs that would make AC/DC proud. They end the night with their own "Wild Mountain Nation," which landed on Rolling Stone's "100 Best Songs of 2007" list, along with the accolade "the best Grateful Dead knockoff in forever."

Overall, the show has the merry nonchalance of old friends busting out their favorite songs for fun.

"Our live show, it's kind of all over the place," says singer-songwriter Eric Earley at a hotel restaurant beforehand. "There are a lot of ups and downs. So I always just want people to . . . just try to follow us, stick with us, because we'll go from guitar and three-part harmony to heavy, heavy noise, to riff rock."

The band's recordings are more coherent and polished, but equally eclectic. Blitzen Trapper's latest album, "Wild Mountain Nation," which the group self-released in 2007, deftly combines two of Earley's primary musical influences. It draws on both the old-time music he was introduced to by his father, who played in bluegrass bands and taught him banjo when he was 6, and the indie-rock band Pavement, whom he idolized as a teenager.

The musical influences may be varied, but the songs themselves reflect a particular time in Earley's life. " 'Wild Mountain Nation' was definitely a very specific burst of music that was prompted by me moving out of my house and being homeless for a year, just living in this old building by the river and recording everything," says Earley. "It was a very specific time."

Earley, who brings Blitzen Trapper to the Middle East Upstairs Thursday, will try just about any musical style. Fans revere the band's cover of Heart's "Crazy on You," performed with electro-pop panache. Earley has also written and self-recorded an indie-electro album for kids.

And the mood shifts yet again on Blitzen Trapper's fourth album, "Furr," which will be released later this year by Sub Pop. Outtakes culled from 34 tracks recorded for the album have been gathered on a tour-only EP, which Earley describes as mellower than previous recordings. This release has a unique identity, but Earley doesn't think of any project as an autonomous entity.

"I think that, a lot of times, what you see as a record isn't really a record," he says. "Like Iron and Wine's first record wasn't really a record, but it's super good. . . . People think certain things about a record because it comes in this very concise package. But when you're making an album, it's not always like that. You're always ditching songs or grabbing ones from a while back."

Ask Earley about his songwriting process, and he gets the pained look of a school kid kept in during recess. There's nothing to analyze, really, as his songs and his band just sort of happened. Earley and his bandmates are longtime friends, most of whom grew up together in Salem, Ore., before moving to Portland in their early 20s. They never made a conscious decision to form a band. They simply play music together and always have.

It was Blitzen Trapper's intense musical passion and eclectic sound that made San Francisco-based duo Two Gallants take them out on tour last fall.

"It kind of struck us as being very eclectic and motivated in a sincere way," says Two Gallants drummer Tyson Vogel. "We thought it would be a good match to go on tour together, because they had something very similar to us in feeling but had a very different dynamic."

The compliment could just as well go both ways. Earley was thrilled to tour with Two Gallants, who impressed him with their musical integrity. He feels the same way about the Seattle-based band Fleet Foxes, who are now opening dates on Blitzen Trapper's first headlining tour.

For Earley, finding such like-minded musical compatriots is rare because, for him, there's a little bit of mystery that goes into making good music.

"Anybody that has vision of any kind, there's some sort of magic, and you can feel that; it's just subconscious and instinctual," he says. "That's what I'm attracted to, but I feel like there's not a lot of bands that have that."