Premiere: Bronze Radio Return is here to ‘Entertain You’
The indie-rock band celebrate their veteran status and thrill of the stage with a new track.
New wave band The Buggles famously lamented the struggle of musicians in the dawning of the video era. “Video Killed the Radio Star,” ironically the first music video to ever be broadcast on MTV in 1981, wrestled with technology’s burgeoning frontier and holding onto evocative art-pieces of yesteryear. “They took the credit for your second symphony / Rewritten by machine on new technology / And now I understand the problems you can see,” frontman Trevor Horn sang, motionless in space and time. His sorrow-laden, eerily prophetic, words cast an even darker, longer shadow across today’s landscape. Amidst the streaming age, a disastrous transitional period, you could say indie-rock band Bronze Radio Return have pivoted to video ⏤ but with a keen eye for TV consumption.
Through their various endeavors, which have resulted in placements on such shows as Catfish, 90210 and Shameless, as well as numerous commercials and ad campaigns, the veteran troupe of players have harvested more than 60 million streams on Spotify. It’s an impressive achievement and one which indicates a great appetite for their particular flavor of cross-genre radiance. Now, on the back of their Check Two EP, released just last month, the Hartford, Connecticut five-piece shake and groove with a brand new single, “Entertain You,” premiering today. Its synth-scratched veneer sends a shockwave through the extremities right into the bloodstream, nearly exploding on impact but lighting the body up in a firework display. “We all got a job to do,” reminds frontman Chris Henderson, quickly stomping his vocal power into overdrive. “I jump around all night / In a room full of strangers / I got a job to move ya, amuse ya / Keep you up when it’s getting late,” he soaks his limbs in waves of audience applause and screams, transmitting that energy right back into the crowd.
“Entertain You” grabs the throat and doesn’t let go, as it rides the rippling neon lasers and vanishes into a sea of clashing bodies and sweat and alcohol. “[This song] is our prideful ode to being entertainers. It’s our love, and it’s also our job. Most folks have a job of some kind wether it be a teacher, a truck driver, a doctor, etc.,” says Henderson to B-Sides & Badlands. “I grew up always hoping to have a job I loved doing all the time. Now, I am lucky enough to say I have a job with my closest friends traveling all over the place, meeting new people every night and playing music.”
“It’s what I came here for / To feel the floor pulse under me,” Henderson sweeps overhead with a volatile mix of roots-rock and psych-pop. The subsequent vocal shower is almost baptismal in nature, luring the listener down to the river not to pray but to dip into the effervescent, ritualistic bliss he has come to embody. Bronze Radio Return is an electrifying outfit, rounded out with Rob Griffith (drums), Patrick Fetkowitz (guitar), Matt Warner (keys) andBob Tanen (bass).
We’ve all got a job to do, and yours is to spin “Entertain You” till you die from (musical) exhaustion.
Listen below:
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