Those who know me likely know my temptation this week. Covering Blanco Bronco’s show at Hell’s Kitchen with Girl Trouble and Paris Spleen on Saturday, July 26, there’s just one white Bronco that keeps coming to mind.



John Elway, bubba: the greatest quarterback of all time.



Maybe it’s the fact that NFL training camp is right around the corner or that Brett Favre’s selfishness has reminded me just how beautiful Elway’s exit after back-to-back Super Bowl victories was, or perhaps just that I’m a dork from Denver — but every time I hear about Blanco Bronco I think of Number 7. It’s just the way I’m wired.



But, for the sake of the Weekly Volcano’s readership, I’ll try to contain myself. I doubt you have any interest in reading (for the eleventy-seventh time) about my infatuation with John Elway; and quite honestly, I think I owe the real Blanco Bronco a little more than that.



Blanco Bronco is a band the Weekly Volcano simply adores. Natasha has gushed about them. Carmen has sung Blanco Bronco’s praises. Pappi Swarner has offered up his own editorial kind words. And even I’ve thrown down a complementary sentence or two about the band on the Spew (www.weeklyvolcanospew.com).



Blanco Bronco is a band we here at the Weekly Volcano know all about. We’re practically sitting in a tree, k-i-s-s-i-n-g.



However, you have a life. You may not have time for wading through Tacoma’s growing pool of indie rock goodness to find the gems. Perhaps you look to columns like Rock Rhetoric to do the work for you.



If this is the case, please let me introduce you to Blanco Bronco. A little bit sloppy and insistent — in the most beautiful sense of the words — Blanco Bronco is pressing and raw. The band — roping in a number of sounds and varied influences — fits in with Tacoma’s indie uprising, but also sounds like — if it came down to a fist fight — they could whip any band of shoe-gazing arties out there. Though the band — through song structure and lyrics — does sound educated, they don’t cross the Obama line of elitism, and at their heart is always a rock and roll band first. That is, perhaps, Blanco Bronco’s most endearing quality.



“We come to rock, speak softly and carry big amps,” says Blanco Bronco guitarist Aaron Wilson. “We’re making a choose-your-own adventure book of Tacoma rock. I think we are aimless songwriters. We rely on whatever seems to work for the song itself, and we try to be really diverse in our styles. Just because something doesn’t sound exactly like us doesn’t mean we won’t try it out. I try to apply the thought process that perfection lies in imperfection. One of us will start on something and the rest of us will try to contribute, if it feels right it may become a song.”



“The chemistry is quite good between us, we actually enjoy hanging out together outside of the band,” says drummer John Ledington.



“We’d probably be a better band if we didn’t, because we’d spend more time practicing instead of just hanging out and laughing at each other,” adds bassist Tyler Royster. “We’ve written hundreds of hooks and parts, but 99 percent of them never make it to an audience.”



In the past, when discussing Blanco Bronco’s sound on the Spew, I compared the band to Pavement. Though it’s a description I believed at the time, and one I’ve heard from a number of angles, looking back on it I must have been high. Blanco Bronco does subscribe to an indie rock chaos theory than can sound Malkmus-like at times, without a doubt, but that’s just one of many comparisons a desperate music writer could make. This band is diverse. Pigeonholing Blanco Bronco with any other description than “seriously f***ing good” is nearly impossible.



“The Pavement thing sort of cracked us up. I think I’m the only member that even really listens to them. When Aaron played me some of the old stuff he’d done when we first met, I thought one of his songs sounded very Pavement like,” says Royster. “I honestly can’t hear them very much in Blanco Bronco, but we could definitely be compared to worse bands. I really like Pavement, so I don’t mind that a bit.”



“I don’t know who we sound like, or who you can compare us to, honestly,” says Ledington. “We play a pretty varied set of music. I think a lot of people including us don’t know exactly how to describe it.”



With or without a completely accurate description of Blanco Bronco’s magic, rest assured their show with Paris Spleen and Girl Trouble this Saturday at Hell’s Kitchen will be a weekend highpoint. And the Weekly Volcano isn’t just saying that because we’re in love, either. It’s common knowledge.



“This is a great bill. If you haven’t heard of, and don’t already love Girl Trouble by now you’re an idiot,” offers Ledington.



“I’ve wanted to play a show with (Girl Trouble) for years. In fact, don’t tell Bon Von Wheelie this, but I’d even pay to play with Girl Trouble,” adds Royster.



Luckily for Blanco Bronco, that won’t be necessary.



“Paris Spleen is kind of emblematic of the good things that are happening in Tacoma. There is a real and vibrant music scene in Tacoma these days,” says Wilson. “It seems like a lot of people don’t know that. Bands like Paris Spleen, and other bands like The Drug Purse, Umber Sleeping, and The Elephants are really starting to define a new Tacoma sound.”



“And then there’s us,” Royster chimes in. “We sound like Pavement.”



Or do they? Find out yourself this Saturday at Hell’s Kitchen.



[Hell’s Kitchen, Girl Trouble, Blanco Bronco, Paris Spleen, Saturday, July 26, 9 p.m., $5, 3829 Sixth Ave., Tacoma, 253.759.6003]



Boom, boom, boom via e-mail to mattd@weeklyvolcano.com.