Words by Sean Moeller//Illustration by Jonas Ranson
You can milk anything with nipples, so it’s been famously said, and you can race anything with legs, wheels or wings. Portland, Oregon’s The Kingdom are mighty competitors and maybe it was just a matter of time before it tested the extent to which these machines and non-machines could cover distances, great and small. The band’s latest album K1 — its debut full-length — is seemingly a chronicling of a cross country journey on either a motocross bike or a go-kart. Whatever the vehicle, the guy at the beginning and the guy at the end are wearing the black and the gold, and if it’s autobiographical, then it’s lead singer Chuck Westmoreland and he’s got the mixed look of Jim Gaffigan, Big Ben Rothlisberger and Andy Van Slyke (sports star comparisons are permitted since the band’s last EP was a daydream, concept record about Johnny Unitas as a divine being kicking football ass in a different kingdom; Gaffigan was my own poetic license). The album’s over before you know it, but that’s the way races work. They’re fast and furious and then everything’s standing still again and the ground’s eerily firm and stagnant. The furious and death-defying parts of the race are what The Kingdom does splendidly, being succinct enough to be appealing to the Guided By Voices and carefree and experimental enough to tap into the same well that Carey Mercer and Frog Eyes must suckle from. There’s no pretension to anything on K1, just a romp through an idea that slaughter’s a loose gathering of girlie songs about breakups and hot bodies any day. The band gives concept albums a 10 times greater name than The Mars Volta does and here we are wondering what the subject matter’s going to be for the next record. A cool segue to link the ideas of the last two records would be an album about homing pigeons, used to send messages during WWI and WW2 times. They’re now used mostly for racing. Homing pigeons, look like footballs with necks, bringing Unitas back. Or, some sort of dissection of “The Muppets Take Manhattan” would be good too. But I’m not an artist or influential. I think this band is both.

Chuck’s Week in Review:
1. New Glasses
My glasses were all scratched up and there was a part of the plastic frame that was yellow and bubbly from where a cigarette had been put out on them sometime during the last tour. I felt like an asshole. I went to the mall to get some cheap new ones and my friend Chris was there too. He said he couldn’t see anything, everything was all blurry and he couldn’t take it anymore. We helped each other pick out frames and then walked
around the mall, blind, drinking Orange Julius’. He was in shock when he put his new glasses on. Total clarity. He couldn’t believe it. I was going to a friend’s house later for spaghetti and meatballs and invited him to come along. In my car, stopped at lights, he couldn’t help but lean out of the window and yell at pretty girls how beautiful they were. Girls had been these fleshy blobs to him for the past five years.

2. New book
I started reading the new Cormac McCarthy book yesterday.

3. Christmas mysteries revealed
My Mom called (imagine Louisiana accent)
— Well… you know how your father is afraid of Christmas trees?
— What? No, not really.
— Well… you know how we never had a real Christmas tree?
— Yeah, I never really thought much about it.
— Well that’s cause your father is afraid of them.
— Why is he afraid of Christmas trees?
— He just hates cutting em down and then throwing them away. Thinks it’s a waste of a tree.
— Yeah, I can see that.
— So he ordered a miniature tree off of the worldwide Internet that comes already decorated. And Chuck…
— Yeah mom?
— I almost cried when I opened that box. It was the saddest little tree I’ve ever seen with just a couple of lights on it and a little bit of tinsel. It was so sad.
— Well, just close up the box and put it in the garage and don’t ever think about that tree again.

4. Cooks
I got a call at the restaurant from one of my cooks. “Hey man, I can’t come into work tonight. I sat down really hard and hurt my ass.”
“You’re not fucking serious.”
“Yeah man, it hurts real bad.”
“Couldn’t you have come up with something else? You know the kind of jokes people are gonna be telling about you?”
“Shit, I didn’t think about that, man, alright, tell everybody I got food poisoning.”
“No fucking way.”

5. Early Morning
I’ve been waking up really early, like at 5 a.m. Never been able to do that before.

The Kingdom
Arena Rock Recording Co.