'West Coast Kingdom' offers big serving of mischievous mysticism, magical melodies

8.89 out of 10 stars

Music is its own medium, making it difficult to convey through words on a computer screen the full auditory impact of West Coast Kingdom, the debut release by Amores Vigilantes on San Francisco's Three Ring Records.

The opening track, “Five Blocks with Ferlinghetti,” flows through the ears and saturates the headspace like a Dalian lullaby, inducing the mind into a kind of dreamy wonder – not unlike the wonder of a foggy San Francisco morning – before reawakening that most precious of inner faculties: the imagination.

Now wide awake in a lyrical dreamland infused with a Beat-Psychedelic-Pop convergence of San Francisco’s musical soul, people listening to the album may find themselves transported in an almost hypnotic fashion to their own private Coney Island of the Mind.

Band members Delfin Vigil and K.C. Staubach co-wrote all 10 songs on the album, which is rumored to have been recorded in a secret room stocked with strobe lights, magical lanterns and World War II-era K-Rations in the San Francisco Chronicle’s sub-basement at Fifth and Mission Streets. Vigil worked as a Chronicle reporter for several years before being laid off earlier this year.

Regardless of where the songs were recorded, fans of both music and newspapers will be glad that they were. For in addition to being a kind of melodious portal into the inner workings of one’s own consciousness, West Coast Kingdom is no less a point blank report on the struggles facing all dreamers, seers and visionaries – not to mention 9-to-5ers and shift-workers – who have to contend with a maddening array of external factors as they do their best to keep love alive in a world that seems hellbent on turning everything that was once joyous and spontaneous into a kind of obligatory drudgery or officially sanctioned corporate event.

Yet like all good San Francisco bands, Amores Vigilantes has a sense of humor. Nowhere is that more evident than on “I Don’t Give a Damn” and its pointed references to “Ackley Kid,” which English majors and serious readers will recognize as a shout out to J.D. Salinger’s still unequaled masterpiece, “Catcher in the Rye.”

Band members Jacob Schroth and Mark Gregory share songwriting credits on some tunes. Jason McCrarey, formerly of Sanctus, and drummer Andrew Nimmo are also part of the current Amores Vigilantes lineup.

In this reviewer’s opinion, identifying musical influences on the band must start with the Velvet Underground, even though the Velvets were about as New York as you can get and the Amores Vigilantes sound is distinctly San Francisco. Other songs, such as the album’s final track “Perfect World,” are reminiscent of R.E.M. at their best, while the tenderly in-your-face “Technically I’m Wrong (At the Elders’ Meeting)” calls to mind the kind of song Gram Parsons might have written had he survived long enough to be produced by Brian Eno.

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.

8.89 out of 10 stars.

Amores Vigilantes will be performing live at a CD release party Dec. 17 at the Café Du Nord in San Francisco. Tickets are $10; the show is for ages 21 and over. For a free download of "Millions of Brazillians," click here. To purchase West Coast Kingdom on iTunes, please click here. To visit the Amores Vigilantes myspace page, click here.

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