Drugs & Attics starts thinking beyond a phone-recorded EP

Monday nights at the Union in Westport are not like other nights in this bar. Usually, the place operates as a happy neighborhood hatchery of drunken dancing and antics, the basement-level space fostering more body heat than a middle school gym class. Not Mondays, though. On those evenings, there’s no cover, and there’s a pretty dependable lineup of local bands.

It is on such a Monday that I’ve come to see Drugs & Attics, a trio of guys playing what they call, with neither much irony nor much finesse, “boogie party music.”

A few minutes after midnight, the band — outfitted in mostly matching white shirts and black neckwear — take the stage outside. It’s warm and springlike, but there are maybe 40 people here, of whom fewer than half notice that music is about to start.

That changes as soon as Drugs & Attics begins to play.

There’s really no ignoring these guys. Drummer Brett Livingston, 30, is a joyful maniac behind his kit. Bassist Andrew Paluga, 26, pulls some impressive bass faces, a lock of his meticulously coifed hair falling across his forehead. And 21-year-old guitarist and lead singer Willie Jordan (also of Yes You Are) is an eye-catching force, his dark, tangled curls moving with every nod of his head, his head moving with every driving guitar riff. And there are plenty of riffs.

Drugs & Attics doesn’t venture far from crusty garage punk, with scuzzy guitars and offbeat humor (see songs “Drug Party,” “Tripping Me Out” and “The Highlife”). And its output isn’t deep yet, just a six-song EP — Meltr, recorded on Livingston’s phone — on a Bandcamp page. But somehow, the band sounds unlike what you usually hear around Kansas City. The songs are punk-show short and loud as hell, and they wear their influences front and center — Jack White here, Motown there — via the jagged edges of Jordan’s guitar and the deep, knowing bend of Paluga’s bass. But sophistication also swirls through the grit. Three-part doo-wop harmonies thread their way through a handful of songs, contrasting the enviable centerpiece of Jordan’s voice.

Jordan sings like a Muppet who has been smoking a pack a day for a decade. His voice is a wild instrument, full of scratches and character. As the band rolls through “Not So Tuff,” Jordan’s voice suggests an ace audition for a metal band; one song later, he’s back to a poppier coarseness, carrying the melody in a way that brings to mind Deer Tick’s John McCauley.

“That is not what I expected this band to sound like,” I hear an audience member behind me say to her companion. “This is awesome.”

If the members of Drugs & Attics are being honest, they didn’t really expect to sound the way they do, either. The band came together a year ago March, when Jordan — then still a student at the Kansas City Art Institute — posted on Facebook for potential bandmates. He tells me this upstairs at the Union, seated on a couch in the unused top bar, ahead of the band’s set.

“It sounds kind of funny now, but I was totally serious,” Jordan says. “Brett was the only person to respond.”

Livingston nods. “I’d seen Willie play bass in another band that he was in at the time, and I knew he could shred. And I was like, ‘I’m down. I don’t really have a lot going on right now. Let’s play some tunes.'”

“It was just the two of us for a long time,” Jordan says. “Brett had found a drum kit in the basement of his apartment, and I had a guitar and an amp. We didn’t have any microphones or a PA. I was just kind of on the outs of art school, getting ready to leave, and I was feeling kind of down. I needed something to focus on, and music had always been that.” Paluga joined them this past February.

They haven’t changed into their stage suits yet, and Jordan is wearing denim cutoffs and duck-printed purple socks. He sits between Livingston, who is wearing a paint-stained sweatshirt, and Paluga, whose leather jacket gives him a vague greaser vibe. They seem mismatched — a far cry from the uniformed trio that will dominate the Union’s stage in 45 minutes.

“We want to look like a gang,” Paluga explains, laughing. The others laugh with him but they’re not really joking. Unity is important, Jordan says. It makes them feel like they’re a little more put-together.

They need that feeling: We are speaking less than two weeks ahead of Record Store Day on Saturday, April 18, when the band is scheduled to play the free block party at Mills Record Co., and there isn’t a single hard copy of Drug & Attics’ music to sell in person. Yet.

“We’re battling with ourselves,” Jordan admits. “Like, we just need to make something and have it in the next couple days and give it to people. We’ll burn CDs or find some nerd with a tape duplicator. We’ll have something for Record Store Day.”

Jordan shrugs. There has been a little more recording beyond Meltr but nothing in a studio, nothing that matches the polish all three players hope to achieve.

“We want it to sound good, you know?” Jordan says. “We want it to be a good record. We come from a sort of punk aesthetic, but we don’t want to use that as a crutch. We don’t want to be, like, ‘Oh, yeah, we made these shitty recordings. Here you go, this is us.'”

Later, during Drugs & Attics’ set, the number of invested listeners has tripled in size. It’s an audience of interested, attentive faces — plenty of fans in the making, ready to wait for the right Drugs & Attics album.