Kill Creek Proving Winter Cruel Mammoth Records 1996

Kill Creek Proving Winter Cruel Mammoth Records 1996 CAT#MR-0135

Someday, this album is going to get its due.  It's gotten in the Lawrence scene, it's an accepted masterpiece here.  But, I'm talking nationwide, this album is going to get discovered.  For Kill Creek, it was a the nail in the coffin album.  In 1996 no one wanted to hear Scott Born's divorce album.  Sure, several years ago Matthew Sweet's Girlfriend album was a hit and it was about divorce, but it sounded happy.  This album was fucking depressing.  And, if you put it on because you were a fan of St. Valentine's Garage, well forget it, you didn't want to have anything to do with this.  I mean, it was 1996, by this point, all you had to do was do that fake gargle thing Eddie Vedder does and you could get yourself a pretty substantial modern rock hit.  You didn't even have to be from Seattle at this point or wear flannel, you just had to act like a pissed off teenager.

Kill Creek had that choice.  They could have easily sold out.  They had a major label and would have had the support if they dialed it in and served up something easy.  But, apparently that never crossed their mind.  They rallied behind the broken heart Scott Born and recorded an album no one expected, not even their fans.

And to be fair, it got some local radio play.  The song,"Unsteady" was in heavy rotation on the then "sort-of" cool 105.9 FM.  But, I'm not sure that meant much and probably had a lot more to do with the support of station programmers than it did people that listened to the station.  Outside of 105.9, I don't remember this getting much pub.  I would be willing to bet, Mammoth heard it and gave up on it shortly after putting it out.  The label was on the verge of going under and probably found it difficult to promote an album filled with references to alcoholism, pills and divorce.

Ultimately, everyone missed the mark on it.  Because years later, I'm convinced this is a masterpiece.  This is a an adult R-Rated record dealing with heavy topics.  Now, as an actual adult, the heartbreak behind it all sounds comforting and familiar.  I mean, it sounds like a Wilco album before Wilco existed, yeah, it's that good.  And someday, someone important is going to unearth this thing and convince everybody else.  I'm sure of it--someday it will be considered a lost classic.

It starts with the hit, 'Unsteady,' and the lyrics, "I'll stay sober when I come home this October, and I'll break the windows and let the chill put us to sleep."  The album keeps going from there.  In one line, you know exactly what's going on and what the rest of the album entails; cold, loveless relationship, looming divorce and alcohol abuse.  The song 'With You Around,' starts with Scott Born almost crying, "Well the cancer of the twisted word has pulled apart the confidence you've encouraged."  Holy shit!  Right?  What a bitch this woman is, that or Born's drug addiction is the source of  his twisted reality.  The song 'Role Model' about choosing sides in the divorce ends, "To the hurting kind, your some kind of role model.  It takes guts to save your pain from your friends."  And the song, 'Falsified,' man, it's absurd, hurtful and poetic all at once, "Eight years falsified by the last days.  I crushed your pride with the weight of five months crashing down in between us; three nights not one can repair.  And our cats are so playful while we fight; they're used to our years of sharpened claws."  And it ends on the tune "Punishment" which should be a nod to what Scott Born deserves after putting it all out for consumption like this.  I mean, I've seen some people deal with bad divorces, but the fact that Scott Born told ALL makes you almost want to side with his ex.  I can't imagine she deserved such vengeance.  Coincidentally, the producer of the LP, Ed Rose, once told me they called "Proving [actual ex-wife's name] Cruel" in the studio.

And that's the album, it sounds like a cold. dark, loner, folkie album.  Parts of it are, but it's beautiful.  You don't get this much reality out of music.  It's so autobiographical it's disturbing, but you can't turn away from this train wreck.

Falsified
Unsteady
Role Model

Kill Creek Colors of Home Second Nature 2001

Kill Creek Colors of Home Second Nature 2001 CAT# SN026

I love Kill Creek, probably more so than any other local band.  I was in high school when they started releasing on the Mammoth label and in terms of local bands, these guys were the top dog.  This was the 90's local band that was "going to make it."

The 'Stretch' EP was a solid outing, a bit grunge-a-fied, but a solid 5 song set.  'St. Valentine's Garage' was a perfect high school album.  It was angry at times, sappy at times, and had hooks.  Second, local producer extraordinaire Ed Rose and Kill Creek singer Scott Born wrote possibly the best liner notes in the history of rock n' roll on that album.  Then, my junior year, they put out 'Proving Winter Cruel.'  At that time, it was a total buzz kill.  Why did this band get so damn sad about things?  That CD sat on the shelf for some time.  I still played the crap out of Stretch and St. Valentine's and put the band on mix tapes galore (if you want to impress a girl, hit her up with 'Million' off St. Valentine's, total panty dropper).

Later, say two years, I got to college and things got complicated.  Work, school, and relationships became tough to balance.  I was at JCCC, a lot of friends and my girlfriend were at KU.  Queue 'Proving Winter Cruel' for long drives back and forth.  Holy shit!  Why hadn't I paid more attention to this album?  It was incredible.

At this time, Kill Creek wasn't doing much.  I believe Mammoth had dropped them shortly after 'Proving'.  I began sending the band emails through their website.  I began listening on-line to stuff they put up for the 'Whimsy' album that never came out.  Scott Born started emailing me back, so did other members of the band.  Emails were exchanged which made 'Proving Winter Cruel' that much better for me.

I started championing the band; really spreading the word on 'Proving Winter Cruel' to friends and people in bands.  Surprisingly, so were a lot of other people in the local scene.  It was like we all spontaneously re-discovered this band's greatness.

And that is one of the great things about local music.  On the 'St. Valentine's Garage' tour, Kill Creek played an all ages show at Gee Coffee in Shawnee, KS.  There was well over 300 kids there, kids under the age of 18 like myself.  Well, they didn't all leave the music scene.  Many of those kids formed their own bands, wrote for zines, worked for KJHK, and even started labels.  None of us forgot about Kill Creek and like I said, it's like we all revisited 'Proving Winter Cruel' at an age when it spoke to us.

So, despite being out of it for nearly 5 years, Kill Creek was sucked right back in.  They started playing shows and we all went again.  This time as young adults (well, adult may be a stretch).  Dan Askew, who started up Second Nature was one of those people.  Second Nature had been putting out local hardcore and metal, but, I think the guy who really got Dan interested in the band was Nathan Ellis of Coalesce and Casket Lottery.  I have no proof for that other than Nathan is a featured player on this LP and featured in bands on Dan's label.  Dan got the rights to the catalog and somehow released a compilation entitled 'The Will to Strike', which is a virtual anthology of the band.  He also released this album.

I was honestly scared to listen to the LP when it came out.  Here is a band 5 years out of the loop trying to give it another go.  The idea has train wreck written all over it.  Surprisingly, it's solid effort.  The train-wreck part happened because like other Kansas bands, no one outside Kansas was paying attention.  And, for Kill Creek if they weren't paying attention before, they sure as hell weren't in 2001.

The reviews that surrounded the LP in the indie-circles weren't too favorable either.  Most of them group the band in with the likes of the Get Up Kids and Anniversary calling them a Midwest emo band.  Which is absurd, the band was contemporaries to early Midwest KC bands like Shiner and Giants Chair, but sounded nothing like them.  Outside of the obvious influence the band imparted on bands like the Get Up Kids and the Anniversary, they don't have much to do with that scene.  Kill Creek is far more routed in 80's punk-ish power pop.  If there's an angular "emo" sound, it comes from 80's groups like Mission of Burma and Big Dipper, not Sunny Day Real Estate.

The other comforting part of this LP for me was the familiarity I had with the songs.  A lot of these songs came from the never finished 'Whimsy' project.  It also features a local rock all star cast, the previously mentioned Nathan Ellis, Twani Freeland, the members of the band obviously, and Ed Rose at the helm producing.  The song "Gett Up" is among the best things the band ever did and sets the tone for a great album.  The band actually found a groove in their old age.  Not just heartbroken pop tunes that you scream or cry to, now you could also dance.  It's a blends the crunchy guitars and hooks of 'St. Valentine's' with the roots rock of 'Proving Winter Cruel'.  Shame it came out about 6 years too late, but I'm pretty sure it wouldn't mattered, the band was cursed.

Gett Up
Grandfather's Left Side