Blitzen Trapper "The Man Who Would Speak True"

I remember being about twelve or thirteen, just beginning to get interested in music, sitting on the floor of the living room in my parents' house listening to my father's record of Dylan's The Times They are A-Changin'. I was struck then, as I am now, by the grizzly, yet beautiful ballad "The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll." Its power is compounded by its emotive social commentary, written with a potency that only Dylan is capable of.

While the songwriting of Blitzen Trapper frontman Eric Earley is certainly not on the level of intricacy and adeptness of Dylan, he and his band-mates do seem to grasp the concept of a murder ballad with a certain stirring, ethereal sentiment. "The Man Who Would Speak True," off of Blitzen Trapper's recently released Destroyer of the Void is just such a track, brimming with vivid imagery. The ballad will draw obvious comparisons to the group's "Black River Killer" from their previous album Furr, but listen close enough and the delicate differences between the two become clear. Both are gritty and haunting at their core, and are steeped with the markings of the folk tradition. "Black River Killer" is unrepentant in its language, and lacks otherworldly themes which make "The Man Who Would Speak True" so dreamy and spectral. Within the scope of Destroyer of the Void, "The Man Who Would Speak True" illustrates how Blitzen Trapper can effectively fuse experimental, artistic tones, such as the album's title track, with a more folk-rock approach, expanding the traditional frame of a murder ballad.

The narrator weaves his tale backed by a simply strum acoustic guitar, together with drifting harmonica and keyboards which provide "The Man Who Would Speak True" with its eerie tones. The first verse further expands these imaginative qualities, as the narrator somberly relates how he was saved from "a lonely place," but could not speak: "For I had no tongue it had been replaced / By a green and growing flower which grew / And I knew if I ever spoke I would speak true." In spite of the kindness shown this man by this woman Grace, who he relates was his lover, he is flawed and incapable of showing restraint: "But I fed my tongue on the Devil's rum / In a roadhouse run by a godless bum / On a drunken night with a stolen gun / I shot my lover as she made to run." At court, the narrator can offer no defense, refusing to speak, accepting the punishment handed down by a judge. When he kills again, in the song's next verse, it of an entirely different nature.

Here, Earley and company embark further into the track's mystical undercurrents. Presumably on his way to face whatever fate the judge had decreed, the narrator is assaulted by men of the law, men curious to know what dark secret he harbored. The lyrics read less with malice, and more with regret: "So I opened my mouth like a dragon's death / I only spoke truth but it only brought death / And I laid those boys to rest / For the truth, in truth, is a terrible jest." The narrator is incapable of suppressing whatever darkness is inside him, and the following verse echoes this: "For there ain't no road but the road to home / There ain't no crops but the ones you've sewn / And if you learn one thing from me / You better guard your tongue like your enemy." His tongue, rather what was once his tongue, gifts or curses the narrator with the ability to speak the truth to those around him, but it is a haunted truth over which he lacks control. "There ain't no crops but the ones you've sewn," is a harrowing reminder that no one can escape their past. Even the lawmen on the train have shameful flaws or perpetrated regrettable actions that seem to justify the narrator murdering them.

Unlike "Black River Killer," there is remorse embedded in the words of "The Man Who Would Speak True," he may kill, but he takes no pleasure in it. As the track comes to a close, the narrator is searching for peace, and a pinch of potential happiness exudes: "I came to ground in a one horse town / On the western rim where the sun goes down / Where a branded man might start again / For to right his wrong for to lose his sin." Yet even with a new start, his past and his condition condemn the narrator, and finding himself on the brink, he turns himself over to the authorities. Here, Earley ties together the song with a cyclical twist, as the narrator is banished. Just as he was found at the start in "a lonely place," so his tale ends: "And they planted me by the sea / Now the birds of the air make nests on me." The world has no place for the narrator's tortured words of truth, to which, it is implied, not a soul can measure up to and emerge guiltless.

Listening to this track as many times as I have over the past few days, many question arise concerning the narrator, who is he exactly? Are the truths he speaks merely words or is he endowed with some dark, spectral qualities? These are questions I don't think can be answered by anyone other than Blitzen Trapper themselves. In our mind's eye, we will each have varying images and thoughts arise when listening to "The Man Who Would Speak True," or any song for that matter. Just revel for a few moments in the beautifully eerie tones and words that Blitzen Trapper have provided for you.