Synthpop Christmas from Kansas City

Dragon Inn 3
It’s Christmas: Last Christmas / It’s Christmas / Snowflake Music
(American Laundromat Records, ALR-0063, 2023)

Dragon Inn 3 is a synthpop band from Kansas City, Missouri. They describe themselves as "a recording project featuring members of Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin and friends". Actually, there is only one member of Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin (an indie rock band from Springfield, Missouri with a name I really like), the band's singer/guitarist Philip K. Dickey, plus three friends: Grace Bentley, Sharon Bowie, and E.P. Marcus. Dragon Inn 3 is very 1980s inspired (I read somewhere that they've been a synthpop band since about 1985, but given the age of the members, don't take that literally). In true 1980s style, they made their debut in 2012 by releasing a four-song cassette that was supposed to be the soundtrack to a video movie, Ghoul School.

Besides the cassette, the band has released two albums so far (not counting a digital-only single, as that is not very 1980s), and for the Christmas season of 2023, they released a three-song Christmas 7". All three songs on the 7" are covers, but only one is from the 1980s. The other two are from 1997 and even from 2010. The 1980s song Dragon Inn 3 chose is probably the most covered Christmas song of the 1980s, 'Last Christmas'. Dragon Inn 3 have stripped down the Wham! original and now sing it from a female perspective, but otherwise their cover doesn't stray too far from the original, which was itself a sythpop song. I really like the ending of Dragon Inn's version.

'It's Christmas', the first track on side B and the title track of the 7", was written and originally recorded by Coconut Records, which is not a record label, but the recording project of Los Angeles musician and actor Jason Schwartzman. Dragon Inn 3 replaced all the instruments with synthesizers, the male voice with a female voice, and left out the sleigh bells, but it still sounds like a Christmas song.

Schwartzman made his film debut in the 1998 Wes Anderson film Rushmore and, coincidence alert, the last track on Dragon Inn 3's 7" was also used in that film, although it was originally composed by Devo member Mark Mothersbaugh for another Wes Anderson film, 1997's Bottle Rocket. 'Snowflake Music' is a short instrumental piece whose only connection to Christmas is the title of the song. But it goes well with the other two songs on the 7". The 7" was released on snow-white vinyl by American Laundromat Records and is packaged in a very mid-1980s looking sleeve.

Listen to the songs on Bandcamp:


Through Bandcamp you can also the record, also a signed copy, if you pay a bit extra