Obscure Pop Artist Watch — KC Bowman

I’m in San Francisco for work a bunch of years ago (late ’90s). I went into a much-too-hip-for-me CD shop near Union Square, and I heard some terrific Beatle-y pop playing on the store’s sound system. I was hooked on KC Bowman immediately.

His profile on Garageband.com is short but accurate: “KC Bowman is a studio hermit from Oakland, California with weaknesses for Beatle-influenced pop-rock production and short songs with strange lyrics.”

He writes in the Beck vein—strings of non-sequiturs tied lithely together by sound, but with a far poppier outlook. On “Fresher Tin Villages”, his first (and only?) solo album, he ties great tiny pieces of songwriting together as mini-suites.

It’s great stuff, with very competent one-man-band-style production, and fun layers of extras like nicely arranged horns/strings (played by other people, not KC). Good percussion textures that don’t always include the ubiquitous drumkit (sometimes just a metronome tick w/clicky acoustic guitar). If you like Apples in Stereo (but less frenetic) and XTC, you’d enjoy “Villages”.

So where is KC now? I did a little sleuthing — first at allmusic.com. His page there is an expansion of his old mp3.com page, but it still says he’s “working on his second solo album in earnest in early 2001.” Ha! This album… show me it.

But mostly, it looks like his “collective” — Preoccupied Pipers — is busy playing in the San Francisco area, recording, etc. I’ll have to check out some of their releases and see if the Bowman magic is present and upfront.

So I’d say we’re overdue for a true sophomore solo effort… give us more quirky themes, more love song/science lesson tunes like “Spacegirl”, and more crisp recording quality. If you do, I’ll be nice to plants!