West Coast Kingdom
CD LP (TRR058)

Downloads:
Millions of Brazilians (mp3)
I Love You More Than
You Love Me (mp3)


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Delfin Vigil and K.C. Staubach have been known to lose their car keys and things, not to mention every once in a while, their minds. Wasn't too much of a surprise then, when one of them forgot where the other said they'd store the mastertapes to their album. Fortunately, the recordings were found - along with the key to a place called "West Coast Kingdom" - the name of the Amores Vigilantes debut album.

Parts of the Amores Vigilantes album, which has hints of the Beach Boys hanging out with The Stone Roses with a little bit of Lou Reed loitering around, was secretly recorded in the basement of the San Francisco Chronicle, where former reporter Delfin Vigil used to smuggle instruments and musicians past security guards.

"We really wanted this album to feel like a melodic San Francisco post card," says Delfin who spent more than ten years at the paper reporting on film, music, as well as tragic shootings and stabbings around the city. He wrote and recorded several parts of the songs in an abandoned room in the Chronicle's basement, near where old printing presses still stand. "I loved the idea that we recorded in a kind of clandestine atmosphere, yet still right smack in the middle of downtown San Francisco - and literally underground."

Amores Vigilantes sounds the way San Francisco feels. Not necessarily Tony Bennett's cable cars climbing halfway to the stars or Otis Redding's lazy day on the dock of the Bay - although those classic city soul feelings can be felt in their songs too. Amores Vigilantes taps more into the imperfect parts of town where the Barbary Coast ghosts linger outside a hundred-year old saloon, still housing lonely but content souls. Or out at the foggy ocean where the broken hearted people try and learn how to fall in love again.

Delfin Vigil and K.C. Staubach began writing songs together in tenth grade English class, which they often skipped to go guitar and record shopping together on Haight Street and Telegraph Avenue during the early 1990s. They spent the rest of that decade playing dive bars around the city -- like Tommy Guido's Purple Onion and the long defunct Cocodrie around the corner. In 2004 they released a Three Ring Records 7" under the name Love Vigilante. K.C. Staubach soon after retreated to the "Island of Incognito." Upon recent return they changed the band name to Amores Vigilantes, mainly because "everything just sounds cooler in Spanish," says K.C. The full Amores Vigilantes lineup now includes two other former high school friends, Jacob Schroth (keyboards) and Jason McCrarey (bass) - along with former Seventeen Evergreen and current HotTub member, Mark Gregory.

Reviews for West Coast Kingdom:

"All influences aside, West Coast Kingdom stands on its own as one of the finest debut albums of the year. Get it. Play it. Let your imagination play along."
- All Voices

"West Coast Kingdom, the debut CD by Amores Vigilantes, will hypnotize you from the first chord on the first song. This is chill music. Makeout music. Take the hat off your buddy and chase each other down the street, then laugh at an inside joke until your stomach cramps up music. The love songs are right up there with '80s Echo & the Bunnymen and The Cure, including the tracks Urayasu Girl and Perfect World."
- Tony DuShane, SF Gate



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