Lineup Changes, Recording Gaps Hurt Best Kissers

If Seattle pop rock quartet the Best Kissers in the World, which plays the Big Dipper tonight, could only gain some momentum in its career, the band might actually go somewhere.

For a number of reasons, that has yet to happen.

First, over the last five years, the band has endured a string of lineup changes. Singer Gerald Collier remains as the lone original Best Kisser. Fortunately, the band’s current lineup has stayed solid for about a year.

Second, there have been long gaps between records. Its first EP was released in 1991. Then its major label debut “Puddin’,” another EP, came out in 1993. And instead of capitalizing on the buzz “Puddin”’ stirred up, the band didn’t release its first album “Been There” for another year.

Again, much of this had to do with personnel changes.

The Best Kissers in the World, still one of the Northwest’s greatest pop-rock outfits, was scheduled to release its second album “Yellow Brick Roadkill” this month. According to Collier, due to the abnormally high influx of new releases hitting stores this fall, the band’s label, MCA, won’t release the LP until February.

“It’s coming out sometime in February,” he said rather confidently in a recent phone interview.

Collier, whose favorite Best Kissers release is the debut EP, promises once the album comes out, it’ll be well worth the wait.

“I think this is the closest thing we’ve come to the first EP. If you like the EP, you’ll probably like the album.”

Maybe once that album comes out, the band might gain some momentum.

Joining the Best Kissers on the bill is the all-female punk rock trio Teen Angels.

Seattle’s Teen Angels is the latest signing out of Sub Pop, ending the label’s lengthy streak of recruiting non-Seattle bands.

Indeed, the band was a good pick because the Teen Angels restores the punk edge the label once had with past Supersuckers and Dwarves albums.

Two of its members, drummer Lisa and guitarist/vocalist Kelly Canary, once plowed the sludgy, yet prototypical, sounds for one of the region’s best female units, Dickless, also a one-time Sub Pop band.

After only releasing a two-song 7-inch for Sub Pop and contributing a tune to one of C/Z Records’ Terriyaki Asthma compilations, the quartet, on the verge of greatness, quit.

Teen Angels is the first band that the two former Dickless members have played for in a few years.

Don’t be confused by the band’s name. The Teen Angels, rounded out by bassist Julie, isn’t a sweet, innocent trio purveying sugar-coated pop songs. Musically, the band strikes viciously. And, Canary wails like she’s never seen a good day.

The band’s releases include “Julie’s Jazz Odyssey” 7-inch, “Jesus Is On My Side” 7-inch and “Teen Angels: The Early Years” (the band’s only been together for a year) 7-inch. Its debut album will be issued on Sub Pop in January.

Lazy Susan opens.

Show’s at 9:30 p.m. The cover is $4.

Elsewhere in the night

The 14-year-old L.A. pop-punk king Pop Defect joins its Flipside Records crony Paper Tulips at the Big Dipper on Monday.

Pop Defect, originally from Seattle, stops through Spokane every year and always puts on a memorable performance. The band has racked up 12 full-length albums in its career including 1995’s “Don’t Be Hateful.”

The Paper Tulips, from Long Beach, Calif., have recorded several excellent records such as “Meanwhile, Orbital,” “Baker’s Dozen” and “Insects.”

Music starts at 9:30 p.m. The cover is $3.