- Border Rangers have only been around for a minute, but they’re a band with a presence that seems old, bitter and strange. There’s an eerie, backhills twang to Orin Strung’s violin that send a chill up the spine and haunts the back of your mind. The low rumble of Muzza Monroe’s baritone guitar goes together hand-in-glove with his rough-as-guts bass voice: a grinding combination that grabs your attention like the snarling of a razorback. That alone would be enough to slouch along, sullen and bluesy, but the band is given unflinching direction by Will Hatchet’s driving drums. These elements are just primed to tell bluesy stories of debasement and depravity.
Again, though the Rangers have only been in the game a year or so, I’m sure Muzza Monroe has a few stories. To begin with, he looks like leather stretched tightly across a weathered skull with a fedora wedged on top. It’s testament to the long tenure he’s had with various bands, all of which seem to feature his own name in theirs: The Chucky Monroes or Muzza Monroe And The Lushous Strings, for instance. He’s every bit the irreplaceable, iconoclastic frontman here. His deep, harsh, sung-spoken rasping is the defining feature of Border Rangers.
It’s at least as impressive as the unbelievably muscular crooning of Cash Savage, whose band The Last Drinks the Border Rangers likely have more in common with than any other. Having said that, The Rangers slot in surprisingly neatly amongst a collection of nasty-ass Australian blues bands. They have more percussive energy than The Last Drinks, putting them close to the thundery likes of The Dirty Three. They’re almost as heavy as blues-metallers like Gay Paris and both bands take a rich, folkloric approach to songcraft. The Rangers’ heaviness, however, threatens more than it delivers: staring at you from across the other side of the bar with great malice, rather than coming over and glassing you.
Being similar but-not-quite like all these other bands, could be distinctly mediocre, producing a jack-of-all-trades with mastery of none. That’s not how this turns out, however; there’s definitely a place for these guys. It seems to be just something about dark, ferocious Australian blues bands, it’s almost like they can’t help but become cult institutions. You might say it’s a big call for a band that’s been hiding out somewhere between Uki and Lismore for a year, garnering the grand total of one-hundred-and-fifty Facebook likes. Well, I say, fair warning. There’s something old, bitter and strange lurking in the backwoods of Northern New South Wales, you’d be well advised to heed my words.
- Chris Cobcroft.