ALL ACROSS THIS (LP)

No longer concerned with making even the slightest feint toward delicate indie rock sensibilities, Blitzen Trapper settle into the '70s on All Across This Land, their eighth album but only third since retooling themselves as hirsute troubadours. With its ten songs weighing in at a mere 40 minutes, All Across This Land feels designed to be spun on vinyl, with the first side setting like a sunset with "Lonesome Angel" and the second side crashing out of the gate with "Nights Were Made for Love," a song designed as both an open-road anthem and a third single to be serviced to AOR. Blitzen Trapper's period trappings -- which, outside of the occasional old-fashioned synth purloined from 1985, are meticulously accurate -- are the key to their charm, because they devote as much attention to their arrangements and productions as they do their songs. A fair chunk of All Across This Land hews to a burnished folk-rock suited to the wide-open plains -- it's a combination of Neil Young and the Band, skewed by a dash of Petty -- but the songs that pull in the attention are the lumbering riff-rockers, the ones that open the album and set a muscular, nostalgic tone that, if you're of a certain disposition, is pretty hard to resist. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine