Buckle Rash – Broham (Bad Apple/Dark Roasted)
Country Music doesn’t rate much space around these parts but scratch the surface hard enough with a wooden nickel and you’ll find it, lurking like a grinning red-headed uncle in rock and roll’s family tree. The births of the modern versions of the blues and country appear on American timelines that run through the Appalachian backwoods and the mid-western dustbowls of the 1920s.
The Australian strain of Country Music, on the other hand, is much more bastardised. It rose to prominence in the post-World War II years. In the ‘70s, media maven John Laws hitched his wagon to it, telling a generation: “You’ve never been trucked like this before”.
Country is still a thing a few hours outside of any major Aussie city, but the stuff that makes it into mainstream media slavishly apes global trends of blurred stylistic lines and over-production, and major labels have their pawprints all over it.
Not so Broham, the fiercely independent brainchild of Krysler Broham (although if the big boys come knocking with a wheelbarrow of cash, I'm sure they won't say no.) Krysler is the pseudonym for Simon Chainsaw, a mate of the I-94 Bar and co-founder of the Vanilla Chainsaws in the 1980s in the burgeoning Sydney underground scene.
Broham’s twang is undeniably country but Broham’s music retain traces of Simon’s own musical DNA, notably a sense of melody and a (veiled) rock sensibility.
The Chainsaws grew up in a scene that spawned The Johnnys and Beasts of Bourbon, two bands who made putting country music’s entrails on a fork and holding it over an open fire a popular pastime. Decades later, Broham also rocks, but in a much more dignified way.
“Buckle Rash” is Broham’s debut long-player and skirts country’s cliches without completely turning its back on them. You’ll instantly recognise “Truckin’ Man Blues” as a song about long-haul road transport and longing.
It doesn’t take a relative of the late Reg Lindsay to know “Field of Gold” is about nostalgic yearning or to peg “We Got It All” as being about dreams and drought breaking. “Charlm and Teeth” is an unabashed stab at radio airplay that praises a chick with good dentistry.
If you're a devotee of the Australian underground's halcyon days the showstopper will be the powerful cover of X's "Don't Cry No Tears", where a superb Krysler vocal and lap steel give the original a new dimension.
The playing throughout the record is top shelf. Krysler sings and strums acoustic guitar. Jy Perry and Been Seeto contribute pedal steel, Neil Everitt and Dave McKeowen lead guitar. The engine room of drummer Alex Elliott and bassist Peter Card is rock solid. Golden Guitar nominee Michael Carpenter continued occasional keys and is in the producer’s seat so you know it sounds ace.
The CD packaging itself borders on the extravagant with a lyric book and lavish artwork.
Let’s be real: We need another Keith Urban tour like a prize Red Angus bull needs a set of silicone tits. “Buckle Rash” is one fun truck trip that doesn’t take itself too seriously. Hitch a ride on streaming services or the band’s Bandcamp.
3/4
