Old Timers

posted in: Artist Features

Chris Henderson grew up listening to his father’s old bronze radio, transfixed by the warm, old-time music that crackled through its speakers. So it’s easy to see the inspiration for his band, Bronze Radio Return. Blending folk, blues and jazz, the band churns out joyous music with a vintage patina. The bombastic Down There features a roughshod orchestra of trilling organs and twanging guitars. You’d think theirs was a purist approach to folk if not for the scorching guitars riffs and spacious percussion that make parts of Down There sound more like The Secret Machines than Mumford & Sons. The mood here is ecstatic and convivial”the spreading warmth of your first glass of bourbon leading you into a dizzy barroom sing-a-long. Shake, Shake, Shake continues the rapture with stomp-clap percussion and a sailing chorus brimming with romanticism. Henderson’s endearing croak is similar to Marcus Mumford’s, and on Digital Love he uses it to lacquer the dusty jazz melody with laid-back sex appeal. I’m an analog man with a digital case of you, he rasps. That blend of analog and digital is precisely what makes Bronze Radio Return a band worth tuning in to. That’s an order.