Hipshot Killer’s Mike Alexander on the long road to a new album

Hipshot Killer recalls a specific era of ’80s punk rock. Owing more to the melodic likes of Descendents and Husker Du than to the usual angry suspects, the Kansas City punk trio has developed a following among those who enjoy the band’s self-described “powerpunk” — an apt descriptor for the potent blend of power-pop and early Midwestern hardcore.

It’s been three and a half years since the band’s self-titled debut LP, so it comes as somewhat of a surprise that Hipshot Killer has finally released another full-length. That LP, They Will Try to Kill Us All, is out soon via Throwing Things Records.

Between the holidays, The Pitch spoke with Hipshot Killer’s front man and guitarist, Mike Alexander, to get the lowdown on the long-simmering record.

The Pitch: You’ve mentioned in passing that “technological problems” were what caused They Will Try to Kill Us All to take two years to come out. What’s the story behind that?

Alexander: It was nothing really specific. It was more like communication over modern technology. Michael Stout, who produced this with me, he would do a mix and do a bunch of stuff, and then he’d send me those tracks, and I’d listen to it and send my notes back. We’d do that back-and-forth, sending each other notes, and it’s just really tough to properly communicate with someone about what you’re hearing when you’re not in the same room with them, I’ve found.

How far apart were you?

Just a couple of blocks, at one point. Yeah, it was fuckin’ stupid, man. He was living at 41st and Charlotte, and I was living at 31st and Wyoming, and he moved to, like, 45th and Rainbow. But he’s the other guitar player in the Beautiful Bodies, so he was out of town a lot. Plus, Thomas Becker, from the Beautiful Bodies, played drums on the record. He was sort of in the band at the time we recorded, because we couldn’t find anybody else.

We had all sorts of personnel problems leading up to the recording of the record, and then after the recording of the record. [laughs] The whole thing really just centered itself and steadied itself earlier this year.

You have a full lineup now, though?

Yes. It’s me, Chris Wagner — who’s been in the band forever — and Buddy Lush. It’s pretty rad how it happened, man: This time last year, we’d been playing with this guy who I don’t want to go into too much detail about, but let’s just say he was a guy who was playing drums with us, and it did not work out. The Revolvers [Alexander and Wagner’s old band] were going to play a show or two around that time, and this guy who was playing drums for both the Revolvers and Hipshot Killer — he was let go. Like, fuck — maybe three weeks before that first Revolvers show was supposed to happen?

Luckily enough, Buddy, who’s been a friend forever, we work together, he stepped up. He’s the best. I asked him, “Can you come and play with us?” and he’s like, “Yeah. Of course.” So, he came and did the Revolvers stuff, and at that point, since the last drummer we had was just an absolute nightmare, I was like, “Hipshot is just done. I just don’t have it in me to teach these songs to someone else.”

Back in February, Buddy was just like, “Why don’t I come play for Hipshot?” I didn’t know if I could go through all that again, teaching all those fuckin’ songs to someone again, with [They Will Try to Kill Us All] two years old at that point — I was just like, “Fuck it. I’ll put it up on a blog or Bandcamp or something for free or whatever.” He kind of talked me out of it: “Let’s get together and jam, see what happens, and if it’s cool, we’ll play some shows.” Hard to say no to that, so we did, and it was great, and then, like, a week later, Korey [Austin] from the Rackatees got hold of me, and was like, “Hey, I’m doing a label, and I want to put out your LP.” I was like, “Fuck. Can’t say no to that.” So here we are, and it’s been pretty great. Those two things — Buddy joining and Korey putting out the record — really saved the band.

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The new record sounds like the next logical step after your debut.

That’s kind of what it is, yeah, I’d like to think.

They Will Try to Kill Us All is at times much more subdued than the self-titled, and then there are portions that are much more furious. I’m thinking specifically about how album-closer “The Prize” disintegrates.

Yeah, sure. [laughs] The way it just turns into a mess, yeah. That was a lot of fun. Believe it or not, the end of that took forever, especially all those drum fills Thomas did. It took a long time. I know it sounds like an absolute cacophonous mess, but it is — to one extent or another — a little bit orchestrated. It’s supposed to sound like that.

That track just seemed like you could’ve put it into a locked groove and just let it simmer infinitely.

Dude, Dwayne [Trower] almost had me talked into that. He mastered it, and he also tried to talk me into a locked groove on the first side, too. I was like, “Dude, it’s already pretty dense. I don’t know.”

The fact that these songs are so old at this point — does having an album coming out and release shows attendant to it rejuvenate them at all?

You know, when Buddy started playing with us, those songs really got rejuvenated, if for nothing else than we’d had two drummers in between the recording and him. And no matter how close you try to play the songs to how they were recorded, it’s always going to have a different feel. It’s going to have a different vibe and take on a different personality, just by virtue of the people that are playing it. I like all those songs, and I like playing them.

Is there a song which you can point to that’s really changed in the span of time between the recording and now?

The song “One Good Night.” That one has kind of a little different vibe now, when we play it, just because of the way the groove has fallen with the three of us, as opposed to how it sounded in the studio. But that song in particular — Mike, the producer, is a big pop music fan. He was constantly trying to convince me: “Man, we could totally Miley Cyrus this album. Man, if you wanted to, we could Taylor Swift the fuck out of this.” That’s a quote! He actually said that to me.

I was like, “Man, I get it. I hear you, and believe it or not, I see the virtue in songs like that. I’ll let you have one, and you can put all the bells and whistles on it you want.” So I think it would be truly impossible for us to make that song sound the same as it does on the record. We’d need to bring in six other guitar players, a keyboard player, a glockenspiel — just all this other shit he put on that song!

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Are you working out new material, even though this new-old record is now coming out?

Oh, yeah. Absolutely. I want to have a new album out by the end of the year. I’m not kidding. I’ve already got the ideas and the preliminary sketches and stuff.