E-Mail This Article to a Friend Big fun The Gentlemen ride again BY BRETT MILANO

The Gentlemen were responsible for two of the most enjoyable, and most diverse, local-band gigs I heard in 2004. The first, last winter at T.T. the Bear’s Place, was full of big bluster and hair-shakin’ rock anthems and ended with a double-lead-guitar duel and a jump into the audience. The second, last summer at Johnny D’s, was played at lower volume to accommodate the club and was hung on slinky grooves and rhythm jams. It was the same guys and mostly the same songs, but few bands can evoke Booker T. and the MG’s at one show and Foghat at another.

A little sublime and a little ridiculous, in other words, but that’s rock and roll. And that’s the Gentlemen, who can remind you of how much fun the stuff is supposed to be. Emerging out of the friendship between Figgs singer/guitarist Mike Gent and the instrumental core of the Gravel Pit (guitarist/singer Lucky Jackson, bassist/singer Ed Valauskas, and drummer Pete Caldes), the band started more as a movable party than as a career move. And it’s pretty much stayed that way, even as the Gents have grown into a local institution of sorts. They won the WBCN Rumble two years ago; and the past month alone found them backing up Graham Parker at the Orpheum on First Night (taking the Figgs’ usual slot as Parker’s band of choice) and making a bunch of baseball players sound good at the "Hot Stove, Cool Music" benefit at the Paradise. And the individual members have been all over the place: Caldes plays with Kay Hanley and Juliana Hatfield; Valauskas plays with Hatfield and Andrea Gillis and did a tour with Wheat; Gent released the Figgs’ best album (the double CD Palais), played on a Candy Butchers disc, and made a solo debut last year. But the Gentlemen still have something most of those other bands don’t: boozy camaraderie and two very loud guitars.

Both entitles are in evidence on their third album, Brass City Band (on their own Gentlemen’s Recording Company label), and the band will launch the disc with an appropriately big blowout at the Abbey Lounge this weekend — three nights starting tonight (Thursday), with a round of opening bands including Heavy Stud tonight and the Brett Rosenberg Problem tomorrow. But the new disc also serves notice that the Gentlemen are largely out of their arena-rock phase. This phase peaked on their previous disc, 2003’s Blondes Prefer the Gentlemen, the album with "rock and roll" in two different song titles, with all three singers starting to sound like Paul Stanley, and with "Riding in the Backseat" (the song that always occasioned the stage jumps and the guitar duels) as the finale. "It’s our cock-rock album," Gent said at the time.

So it’s telling that they didn’t stick to their original title for the new album, For Those About To Salute, We Will Rock You. An AC/DC-based joke wouldn’t really suit the songs on the disc, which lean toward rootsier influences — Memphis soul, pub rock, and especially the Rolling Stones. "We also vetoed having another joky ‘gentlemen’ title, like Gentlemen Start Their Engines," Gent explains over the phone from his Providence home. "I figure that if this band’s going to have any legs, we needed to get away from that. I got the arena-rock thing out of my system last time." And Valauskas points out, "There was an effort not to make it a lot of super, overdriven guitar and big, massive rock. We wanted it to sound like Fender combo amps instead of big Marshall stacks. That kind of brings it back to the way we started, playing at the Lizard Lounge."

As usual with this band, record collectors and other music nuts will know they’re among friends. There are Stones homages all over the place, some subtle (the samba-like "No Need To Leave" is Gent’s tribute to the discofied sound of the Black & Blue album), some not so (the opening "Flame for Hire" starts off with a riff that practically screams Keith). The Cars’ keyboard sound is evoked on "A Lot To Say"; the unlikely duo of Jed Parish and Van Morrison get a nod on "He Had a Mother Tongue." The title namechecks Parish’s band, and part of the lyrics are pinched from Morrison’s "Wavelength." "Silver Boogie" sports ZZ Top guitars and Yardbirds harmonica; "100 Stone" harks back to the Faces. ("We’re definitely the kings of reference rock," Valauskas claims.) In the lyrics department, Valauskas plots a Memphis elopement in "Three Minute Marriage Proposal" (and reminds his beloved to bring the weed), Gent meets his partner’s exes on "Creeping Secrets," and Jackson warns, "Don’t fuck with the brass-city band," on the closing title track — the one song here that would’ve fit comfortably on Blondes Prefer the Gentlemen.