titan! records

Deco Auto debut album available today

Power-pop is for lovers! Kansas City’s own hopeless romantics, Deco Auto, released their debut full-length today (known among the masses as Valentine’s Day), and it is available over on Bandcamp.

Let me begin by discussing the album artwork for The Curse of Deco Auto. Were I to stumble across a CD copy of this in a record store bin in Anywhere, USA, I would know exactly what it is: alternative power-punk with a late ’90s, decidedly Midwestern tilt. Perhaps something from Chicago, Detroit, or one of the other cities that seemed to dominate the sound during the era. It’s a simple cover, but one packed with nostalgia. It brings to the surface quickly fading memories of the simplicity of youth, of a willingness to attend virtually any show just to have something to do, of having good hair but questionable hairstyles. Of having more hair in general.

A handful of the songs on Curse have been making appearances at Deco performances since the band first formed in early 2011, and it’s interesting to witness the degree to which each has been further fleshed out or trimmed and restructured for a proper release, thanks to engineer/drummer Pat Tomek. A veteran of Kansas City music, Tomek is most notable as a founding member of The Rainmakers and frequent collaborator with Howard Iceberg & The Titanics. It’s absolutely worth noting, however, that he also has roots in power-pop, having played with the Secrets*, whose “It’s Your Heart Tonight” single is one of the better installations on what is already a near-flawless Titan! Records discography.

Tomek joins Tracy Flowers in the rhythm section, who in addition to being a founding member, provides harmony vocals throughout the release (and lead vocals on two others – go girl!). Flowers previously provided bass and vocal duties in The Straight Ups, a musically A.D.D. band whose members frequently traded instruments and played a pretty wide range of the rock spectrum. The drummer was Michelle Bacon (née O’Brien), who would go on to be a founding member of Deco, before bowing out in favor of playing in approximately thirty other bands at the same time.

Bringing in the lead, the ever youthful, the possibly immortal, Steven Garcia on guitar and vocals. Garcia is originally from the Saint Joseph area, but moved out to Fort Collins, Colorado, in the early ’90s and became a founding member of Armchair Martian with fellow St. Joe ex-pat Jon Snodgrass. Upon Garcia leaving, he would be replaced by Chad Price (All … no, ALL!), also originally from the Kansas City area, before the two would go on to form the well-received Drag the River. After Armchair, Garcia formed Knee Jerk Reaction, a straight ahead pop-punk band by all accounts, immaturity and all. Upon the band dissolving, Garcia would move back to the Kansas City area and, a few years later, start what was to become Deco Auto.

So now that we’re back to the present, let’s talk about the album. Opener “One of a Million” is in the group of older songs in the band’s repertoire to which I referred earlier, the chorus of which still has that familiar punch of Tracy’s “Ah ha!,” though the guitar is considerably more crunchy than I recall from the earlier days. Up next is “Frozen Tears,” a slower, sadder (non-ballad) song, showing a little more range in both vocals. There’s a spot where a chord is struck and left to float in the air while Tomek plays something akin to the “Be My Baby” beat, and I can’t help but think of “The Angels’ Share,” the closing track on the Revolvers‘ lone album (whose New Year’s Eve reunion show Deco was supposed to play). No accusations of riff lifting, they’re both just damn good songs.

“The Introduction” is the first of two tracks on which Garcia steps back and lets Tracy take over the vocals. It’s a quick, three-minute romp into the poppy territory in which the band specializes before three-chord anthems like “Such a Bother” and “The Silent Ones” pull the album along until the instrumental, surf-tinged “Deco Stomp” serves as a Shadowy Men-esque segue into the latter third of the album. “Play Along” sees Garcia toying with the idea of a guitar solo, which may have been granted a longer appearance were it not for the song’s length (the shortest on the album), but which is a welcome addition regardless. “Empty Gestures” displays the trio’s methodical approach to slower, downbeat songs, and album closer “Turning Down” is once again led by the vocals of Tracy – who, forgive the trope, reminds me quite a bit of Tawni Freeland on the track.

You can stream or download the album below. And you definitely should.

The Leopards’ Kansas City Slickers LP Gets July Re-Issue

It doesn’t take much searching to find out that at one time, Kansas City was on the proverbial map as one of the top Midwest cities churning out a revolving cast of quality powerpop and early punk. To get a glimpse of what was happening in the late ’70s, look no further than the iconic Titan! Records, whose catalog contains releases from a handful of Midwestern underground sensations including Gary Charlson, The Boys, J.P. McClain and The Gems, to name but a few. Kansas City Star writer Tim Finn posted an extensive feature on the label that included interviews with former artists and owners on his Back to Rockville blog around the time the label received its due documentation from Chicago’s Numero Group in the form of a two-disc compilation chronicling the label’s entire output. These days, the owners of Titan! can be seen hosting an occasional pop-up record store, a single-day event at which they sell off thousands of records they have accumulated over the years for only a few dollars a piece.

Looking beyond artists that were released by a legitimate label, you may uncover KC’s The Leopards, a band known for self-releasing their own records years before it was ever a preference. The band that released the extent of their discography on their own Moon Records (not to be confused with longtime ska label Moon/Moon Ska), encapsulated a sound that was not only punk, or powerpop, or even new wave, but pulled in influences from an amalgamation of artists that often preceded the band by decades. The Leopards released three singles prior to their debut LP, 1977’s Kansas City Slickers, which is said to have only received a pressing of 1,000 copies, and there is no authority on how many of those have survived. The band went on to try their luck at fame outside of the metro area, further releasing their own Kinks-flavored combination of pop, punk, garage, and psych well into the ’80s, even getting a fair amount of radio play in the larger markets. But likely none of their output will ever match the locally groundbreaking sounds present on Slickers.

Enter NYC-based re-issue label Sing Sing Records, already with a remarkable roster of releases from both the sadly forgotten and those that have experienced their own late-blooming glory with the ever-growing KBD-hungry sea of collectors around the world. The label has plans to re-issue Kansas City Slickers this July, with a cover that has only been slightly retouched and features the Sing Sing catalog number in place of Moon’s. I will attempt to post an update when the pre-orders go live, but unless you are one of the lucky few who can find the original for under $50, you can plan on spending in the lower three digits if you are attempting to track down the Moon-released version. With the re-issue on the horizon, I will not post a link to download the album directly, but you can find it across the many mod, powerpop and early punk blogs that are out there.