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Denver Broncos UK - "Broncos Fight Song"

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Country music gets a bad rap. How many times have you heard someone qualify their music taste as “Anything but country.” Is it really that bad? I suppose people like Toby Keith and Keith Urban have tainted the style with their special brand of “radio rock with a forced Southern accent” (I’m looking at you, Keith Urban. You’re from freaking Australia.), but one must remember that high, lonesome sound of country’s earlier incarnations.

For those who have been aware of the “alternative country/gothic Americana” style, which includes Wovenhand, Jay Munly and Slim Cessna should have crossed one’s lips at least once. With each artist’s work on labels as disparate as Alternative Tentacles and Pesanta Urfolk, their collaboration (with fellow bandmates Lord Dwight Pentecost and Rebecca Vera), Denver Broncos UK. The band released a 7″in 2013, cementing Munly and Cessna’s union is as all-encompassing as it is an almost unanimously enjoyed listen.

With “Broncos Fight Song,” the first single on Munly and Cessna’s debut Songs One Through Eight, due out on their own label SCACUNINCORPORATED, Munly’s signature dark, lonesome high country folk and Cessna’s Hank Williams II country twang meet in the middle. Though not much of an actual “fight song” as the title may suggest, “Broncos Fight Song” is a calming, gorgeous lullaby, rocking back and forth on creaking, warped floorboards. That isn’t to say this particular song doesn’t carry any brawn, as its sleepy character explodes into a brief, stomping holler on a moment’s notice, but most of the strength carried in DBUK’s sound comes from the soft-spoken restraint which pushes their music forward.

Listen to an exclusive stream of “Broncos Fight Song” below. Songs One Through Eight will be released on SCACUNINCORPORATED this fall.

—Jon Rosenthal

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