Blackstone Rangers

Blackstone Rangers played Township Friday 22 March, in a gig that included Videotape and Panda Riot. Blackstone Rangers are from Texas. Ruth Smith plays the keyboard and sings. Derek Kutzer plays guitar and sings, and Dan Bornhorst plays drums. I did not know much about them before seeing them. I liked the name, that stuck, and bands that appear on my radar by way of Panda Riot usually I like. So I listen to the keyboard driven Mutiny at Toho Bay, the first song on their 5 song EP Into The Sea. Its very electronic, dance friendly and almost trance inducing with Ruth Smith repeating the phrase "into the sea" for most of the song. I wished the song was longer, and I wanted to see them just based on it alone. I was sold and good to go Friday. You listen to Mutiny and you almost trust that this is how they sound like throughout. Oh, but that would be ignoring Derek on guitar and Dan on drums. The rest of the tracks at first seemed to me as related to each other as Four Brothers. And as in the movie, there are more brothers to like. I mean who was Sofia Vergara with, right. What, no one knows the movie? Bloody hell. Anyway, so they sound very different from each other, and it speaks to the wide range that they are capable of. These Rangers from Texas comfortably sound electronic and shoegazy one minute and garage rock the next, as in Sheen Machine...well at least for me it sounds garage rock. It brings to mind The Long Blondes. Its certainly rougher sounding that the first song, Ruth's keyboard near the end of the song reminds me of The Dials now that I'm at it. Remember them? Normally Its hard to sell me a male voice as of late. But it happens. Derek sings lead in  I Won't Tell, where Ruth saying "I'll Find You" made me go back and listen to it again. Yeah another hit of that. And lets add Hollyglen,. In both Ruth's voice provides a haunting support to Derek. His voice is clear enough to hear and take in the words. I love the individual components of the songs, meaning drums, guitar, voices. Its gonna be a long term thing chewing through these.  The guitar sort of rides the drums, sometimes matching it's urgency, or being a calming counter to them.  And you get space to hear just the instruments. I hear some songs and I don't even know what happened to Ruth's keyboard. The element that I so far and away thought would be front and center. Her keyboard changes things just like that. For this show at Township they had this fog machine that just wouldn't quit, and  I grew nostalgic for the times when it would happen with my friends Killer Moon.  The dense fog enveloped and separated Ruth, Derek and Dan in their own separate clouds and good chunk of the front audience as well. I did not listen to the rest of Into The Sea until after the show. I wanted the first imprint to be from seeing them live. Now as I go over them again, they are hitting in ways that didn't the first time. I really can't believe my good fortune. I saw the Blackstone Rangers and they were awesome, I downloaded their music and they were awesome again, a left and the right that you walk into and with lasting impact. The curiosity to see them the first time is now the urgency to see them again.
Zig