The band's final statement as Garmonbozia was the studio record Duble Pepy Majik Plus, an 18-track LP expanding on the R | L track list, and boasting even more songs that would later appear on Blitzen Trapper, including "Donkie Boy" and "Ansel and Emily DeSader."

According to the liner notes, Rexx was "Recorded at the carny shack, fer shook n timsel on Duke's shoot-o-matic for tisks & soda & that ol' broke 4-track what 3-fingrd mike poured old English on and lit on fire."

[16] Comparing the album to artists as diverse as Beck, Willie Nelson, and Rogue Wave, Pitchfork stated, "their sophomore effort shouldn't be dismissed as fluff -- Field Rexx is an earnest crack at bluegrass, country, and folk that's young and brazen enough to incorporate elements from multiple genres."

This paved the way for Blitzen Trapper's breakthrough album, 2007's Wild Mountain Nation, which Earley describes as "a record that sounded like it had been authored by a drunken scarecrow who had been dragged behind a truck.

It's the work of an assured band who can not only treat genre like so much fingerpaint, but brave enough to play it straight for a minute -- not as an empty exercise, but a chance to aspire ... Wild Mountain Nation is a revelation from beginning to end.

Rolling Stone named the track one of the best of 2007, placing it at 98 and calling it "A shambling, hypermelodic jam from Portland, Oregon, indie boys down with Native American culture ... and the best Grateful Dead knockoff in forever.

Rolling Stone gave it four out of five stars, calling it, "an engaging album full of rootsy beauty: gorgeous, wilderness-wandering ballads like 'Stolen Shoes & a Rifle' offer all the benefits of a great pastoral folk-rock record, but Blitzen also toss in ragged guitars, cheap keyboards and mildly weird psych rock on jams such as "Fire and Fast Bullets" ...

[37][38] Rolling Stone commented on the band's Coachella performance, stating, "the six-piece Blitzen Trapper rode wild flights of guitar melody and feedback, with extended tunes of fuzz and contemplation.

"[51] Director Daniel Elkayam, who had previously directed the "Black River Killer" video, created a mystical, soft-lit clip for the album's "The Tree" (featuring Alela Diane).

"[57] On May 21, 2010, the band played a full televised set on the Netherlands' VPRO broadcast network, with a focus on highlighting the songs from the new album, including "Destroyer of the Void," "Love and Hate," "Evening Star," and more.

Pitchfork proffered a 7.5 rating, while Rolling Stone championed the record as, "Trading low-fi ruggedness for gorgeous Americana pop, they conjure Dylan circa John Wesley Harding and proggy ELO but with bong-stoked epiphanies all their own.

Despite the very personal nature of the songwriting (Earley even indicated that the record had originally been intended as a solo effort), American Goldwing became the first Blitzen Trapper album to which creators outside the band were invited to collaborate.

AllMusic pegged the record as "a straight-up, mid-'70s inspired Southern rock album that fuses the Saturday night swagger of Lynyrd Skynyrd with the stoic peasantry of The Band," while Rolling Stone called it an "intoxicating roots fantasy.

[81]The early media hype for VII was strong, with the band playing a short live set for The Current studios (performing the new songs "Shine On," "Thirsty Man," and "Don't Be a Stranger.

"[86] This single did very well for Blitzen Trapper, propelled by a music video directed by Portland-based photographer Robbie Augspurger, described as a "surreal and goofy take on noir tropes" by Stereogum.

[92] On December 17, 2014, the band announced that its first-ever live album was imminent, featuring songs culled from three shows played over November 29 and 30 at the Doug Fir Lounge the previous year.

The band launched a short tour in support of the record, including stops at several City Winery locations in New York, Nashville, and Chicago, in which they played Harvest in its entirety, as well as Blitzen Trapper songs.

"[97] The band began playing a new song, "Rock & Roll Is Made For You," near the end of the Live Harvest tour, and while Delaware Online suggested that that might be the new album's title, the rumor was soon dispelled by Marty Marquis.

[102] Following the show, the official Twitter account of the band verified that several of the songs played the previous night were cuts from the new record: "Lonesome Angel," "Rock N Roll Was Made For You," "Mystery & Wonder," "Across the River," and "All Across This Land.

Fusing the energy of a rock concert with the imaginative possibility of the theater, Blitzen Trapper and PCS join forces in this new project, tracing the unforgettable stories of ordinary Americans caught in an extraordinary struggle to not get left behind.

[116] Wild and Reckless: Soundtrack from the Portland Center Stage Production marked a return to the band's own label, LidKerCow Ltd. Their reason for going off-label, Earley explained, was, "If you do it yourself, you can account for every penny."

[126][127][128] NPR noted that the blend of country-rock with orchestral and experimental sounds made it like a “companion piece” to Furr that also “stands on its own as a sprawling, sumptuous testament to Weird America.”[129] Many reviews were positive, though not all: A writer at college station ACRN insisted that "spacey Americana," such as this album, simply should not exist.

But the songs must have shone through the noise even then, the stand out title track recorded on a nearly defunct cassette 4-track in one take and mixed on a couple hundred dollar PC was almost an afterthought at the time, but its message was real enough, that life consists of change and growth, love and transformation.

[160] Earley dove more deeply into nonprofit work, eventually becoming a full-time case manager,[153] while exploring other arts such as carpentry[161] and painting pictures of his clients and Central American migrants at the U.S./Mexico border.

Oregon Public Broadcasting reviewed Holy Smokes Future Jokes as “a thoughtful, deep album that deserves plenty of attention both for the songwriting and the lyrical content.”[168] American Songwriter noted the variety of musical influences, from older Brazilian tropicália to the British invasion, and noted, “Despite the fact that his songs’ characters enter their intermediate states after some very dark events — car wrecks, shootings, suicide, even an errant meteor — the album is infused with a lightness of being.”[171] Holy Smokes Future Jokes earned an average critic score of 79%, according to Metacritic.

He invited viewers to talk to him but mostly ended up just getting requests to play certain songs, "which is cool.”[168] Soon after the release of Holy Smokes Future Jokes, on Record Store Day of October 2020, one more piece came out from the original lineup.

The concert stream introduced fans to a new lineup with Eric Earley on guitar and lead vocals, Brian Adrian Koch on drums, Nate Vanderpool on bass, and Michael Blake on piano.

"[210] Similarly to Blitzen Trapper's previous album, Holy Smokes Future Jokes, he took inspiration from lessons he was learning about humanity through his work with unhoused veterans as well as from Buddhist texts.

"[235] Record Store Day Podcast host Paul Myers deemed it a "loose concept album" and said it had been "perfect" to listen to when he drove through the desert because both are "meditative" and give the sense of a "connection with the earth.

"[244] In addition, Blitzen Trapper’s own label Yep Roc announced that the album combined "lo-fi intimacy and trippy psychedelia into a mesmerizing swirl of analog and electronic sounds" and called it "one of the finest works of their career–nearly 20 years in.