Dan Brodie & the Broken Arrows

Dan Brodie & the Broken Arrows

Mother Egan's, Friday, March 14 With folks proclaiming alt.country on its deathbed, it should come as no surprise that the most exciting new band working that territory this week in Austin comes from Melbourne, Australia. Dan Brodie and the Broken Arrows are a quintet of long, tall, and young roots rockers who wear a lot of influences on their sweaty brows. Starting off with that familiar chugging-train beat, a rhythm they returned to a couple of times in this too-brief set, Brodie spat out his lyrics with the defiance of a young Dylan. Two songs in, they presented "Lawyers, Guns, and Money," both an homage to its writer, Warren Zevon, and a statement proclaiming them unafraid to rock as loud and as hard as anything offered by the likes of Slobberbone or the Drive-By Truckers. Non-American artists like Brodie interpret this form of Americana from a different angle, one that gives it a scent of freshness that others working similar territory can't approach. Brodie and his Broken Arrows also displayed a sensitive side with a tender ballad, "For Me and You," performed oh so sweetly as a duet with Sherry Rich, a current Nashville resident who's originally from down under. But that tear jerking didn't last long, as they followed it with a version of Neil Young's "Revolution Blues" so fierce that it brought to mind the Clash channeling Crazy Horse. Near the end of the performance, Brodie sang a song with the refrain "you make me want to kill again" repeated over and over against an ominous slide-guitar riff that showed they had a creative, if disturbing, purpose as well.