Harkening back to punk rock’s glory days of the 70s, Oklahoma outfit Broncho captures the aggression, DIY authenticity and youthful exhilaration of a bygone era and then drags it by the hair into the Here and Now, creating a fresh sound that’s unlike anything being played today. With echoes of The Replacements, Iggy and the Stooges and The Ramones, Broncho’s exuberant ten song debut Can’t Get Past the Lips is a blisteringly cathartic 20 minute flash of gritty, crunching guitar work supported by an assaultive rhythm section and made whole by songwriter Ryan Lindsey’s aggressive, yelping vocal work.

Lindsey’s vocals and guitar are supported by Johnathon Ford (bass), Ben King (guitar) and Nathan Price (drums). The project began as an off-the-cuff recording session for Lindsey (who also plays keys for Starlight Mints, in addition to performing as a solo artist). He quickly laid down early versions “Pick a Fight” and “Losers” with the assistance of King (Cheyenne) and Price (Native Lights), and then sent them to Ford (Unwed Sailor), asking for feedback. Ford loved the songs so much that he suggested they begin playing shows as a band.

“The next thing I knew, Johnathon had a show booked in Tulsa,” Lindsey says.
That first show, a manic, ultra-lean showcase of six songs that clocked in at less than 15 minutes, occurred in February of 2010, since then the band has toured across the U.S. and released their debut album Can’t Get Past The Lips to international acclaim.

The collective talent and cumulative experience of all involved with Broncho has resulted in an album that, for all its dirty-dishwater punk roots, is a masterwork of garage/pop simplicity. Speaking of the band’s reference points, Lindsey says “We all love the way those records sound so we naturally went in that direction, as far as fidelity goes. But more than anything, it’s the attitude of an era that I wasn’t around for, but feel a connection with. We didn’t set out to recreate a record from that era, we just took on that message and made it our own.”

Or, as Ford puts it: “It’s not nostalgia, it’s natural.”

Safe Boating Is No Accident crawled out from the morass of disappointments, disillusionments and muted desperation that can really only be found in the Midwest. But at least Leighton Peterson and Neil McCormick found the comic possibilities inherent in those experiences and a vehicle with which to create the musical equivalent of David Foster Wallace's great novel Infinite Jest. Rather than write some heavy-handed purely topical lyrics, these guys are postmodern tricksters who blur the line between humor, biting social satire and solid pop songcraft.

Initially part folk and avant-garde performance art, Safe Boating put on the kinds of performances people talk about for a long time afterward--from disturbingly dramatic faux break-ups on stage, to a reenactment of 2001: A Space Odyssey and a show that can best be described as a staged hostage-taking of the band where it was forced to perform in an alley and the audience saw McCormick's death and resurrection.

For its next chapter, Safe Boating is temporarily setting aside its overtly miscreant ways in favor of sculpting cathartic pop songs akin to what you heard out of the early Elvis Costello and The Jam. Still firmly in place is the sharp wit and playfully caustic conceptual humor that has been the group's hallmark from the beginning. The inspired hijinks will return without warning but Safe Boating has never been about gimmicks so much as involving those who show up in the moment if they dare.
-Tom Murphy