E-Mail This Article to a Friend Unhyphenated rock and roll The Dents do it their way; so does Abbey Lounge Records BY BRETT MILANO
	Related Links Coiled and set to strike The Dents unleash three chords and one cobra BY JONATHAN PERRY

By my rough calculation, the two women who front the Dents — singer/bassist Michelle Paulhus and singer/guitarist Jennifer D’Angora — have inspired as many unrequited crushes as anybody in the local rock world. So you might wonder why the two of them have written so many pissed-off songs about relationships. Paulhus, after all, made a snotty killer of a break-up-themed album, Drive By Kiss Off, with her former band the Decals. And D’Angora, formerly known as Jen Rassler, snarls her way through plenty of nasty rock and roll in her other life as the frontwoman of the Downbeat 5. So you’d expect some serious kicks when the two of them team up. And the Dents’ debut, Time for Biting (on the Abbey Lounge label), doesn’t disappoint: the disc dishes out a half-hour of loud and hooky punk rock, leaving what appear to be ex-boyfriends squirming in its wake.

Paulhus and D’Angora swear, however, that the latter wasn’t what they had in mind. Cornered for an interview after their CD-listening party at the Abbey Lounge a week ago Wednesday, the band members are eager to set the record straight. "First of all, nobody likes me," says Paulhus at the outset. "Everybody’s crushed on Jen. But people think we wrote nothing but songs about shitty guys. That’s a gross, false misconception."

"And besides, everybody’s really crushed on Michelle," picks up D’Angora from across the table. "But that’s why we put the lyrics on the album, so people could see that they’re not all about the same thing."

Indeed, a perusal of the lyrics reveals that more abuse is directed at unreliable friends than at exes. " ‘Miserable Day’ isn’t about a break-up, it’s more like a bad friendship, saying, ‘Fuck you, I have enough to deal with already,’ " D’Angora explains. "And ‘Not Through with You,’ that’s about wanting to get somebody into the sack. No anger there at all. Sure, the songs have a lot of anger, there’s some attitude. And there’s going to be something about shitty guys, just because we’re girls. Unless we swung that way, and then they’d be about shitty girls."

"Everybody gets pissed off sometimes — and frankly, I’m pissed off all the time," drummer Kevin Pickering adds. And guitarist Craig Adams concludes, "It’s a double standard. I know so many guy bands who get away with writing the same kind of thing. But women aren’t allowed to express themselves that way, so they get a lot of flak for writing about relationships."

"You see, that’s the problem," Paulhus wraps up. "Everybody has crushes on Craig instead of us."

Even before forming this band, Paulhus and D’Angora were two of the more visible female rock musicians in town. Paulhus played bass in the Real Kids three years ago and still does in the Marvels. D’Angora became an instant local star when she teamed with then-husband J.J. Rassler in the Downbeat 5 (who are still doing fine despite the marital break-up). The two women first wound up playing together in the Other Girls — a just-for-kicks cover outfit that Andrea Gillis fronted around the time the Decals broke up. Which made it a likely time to put a new band together. After trying a few players out, they wound up calling on two more former Decals, and Gino Zanetti, to complete the Dents. (Former Coffin Lids member Pickering replaced Zanetti after the album was wrapped up; this weekend’s Abbey sets will be his second and third with the band.)

"The bottom line is that we hit it off personality-wise right away," D’Angora notes, sipping a club soda while Paulhus nurses a martini. The two women are a bit of a study in contrasts, with Paulhus being a natural extrovert both on stage and off and D’Angora surprisingly shy when she’s not performing. "It’s true," D’Angora admits, "I’m a totally different person. I get off stage and I just want to hide, and I’m always the first one to leave." She might not have gotten on stage at all if not for one source of inspiration. "When I started playing, I had a vision of what I wanted to be — and this sounds totally ridiculous, but it was David Johansen. That persona he had — he had more sass than most women I know. So once I found my persona and jumped in, I was able to run with it and things started to get easier. Whereas Michelle really is more outgoing, and that’s what people love about her."

"Oh, that’s foolishness," Paulhus shoots back. "Maybe I’m out in public more than most people since I also work at the Abbey, but we both talk to the same number of people after shows." As for the apparent problem of having at least two strong personalities in the same band, "We’ve gotten into a lot of fistfights. We completely rewrite each other’s songs. And Jen and I both wear wigs because we’ve torn each other’s hair out."

In fact, the two get along like the proverbial house on fire, and they don’t mind being part of more than one full-time band. "It gets a little touchy with Downbeat 5 though," D’Angora admits. "Those guys get really protective of their time with me, and rightly so. But this kind of problem is a real luxury — you’re gonna complain because you’re in more than one kick-ass band? That way, you don’t have to worry about getting a good gig on Saturday." Adds Paulhus, "What else are we gonna do — stay inside and watch American Idol?"

As a modern band drawing from old-school punk, the Dents made a fitting choice of former Neighborhoods leader David Minehan to produce their album. Minehan got the balance right, not pushing the band too far into either corner: D’Angora’s distorted vocal on "One More Time" suggests the Downbeat 5 without encroaching on that band’s raw bluesy territory. Likewise, he gets a full-bodied sound from the guitars and the drums but stops short of making it too arena. And the frontwomen’s harmonies put the hooks across without getting too ’60s girl-groupy. The end result, as they probably intended, is just unhyphenated rock and roll. "There weren’t a lot of meetings or discussions about what we wanted the record to sound like — it was more like David Minehan saying, ‘Oh yeah, I know what you’re going for,’ " Paulhus says. Adds Adams, "It was a good fit — kind of like having the soundman at the Rat from 1980 around to mix your album."

The Dents do a two-night release party at the Abbey this weekend, going punk on Friday with the Pug Uglies and Avoid One Thing and rounding up garage-scene faves the Coffin Lids, Muck & the Mires, and Andrea Gillis on Saturday.

IT’S BEEN A LONG WHILE since any of Boston’s clubs has gotten into the record-label biz: 28 years to be exact, since two Nervous Eaters singles and the Live at the Rat compilation were released on Rat Records. So it’s fitting that the Abbey, which is looking more and more like the Rat of this millennium, is the first since then to take the plunge. The Dents’ album is the label’s third release but its first full-length, following a Dents/Street Dogs split single and the Marvels’ mini-album. With a Coffin Lids album due later in the year, they’re already set to surpass Rat Records’ output.

Label co-owner "Malibu Lou" Mansdorf wasn’t around for the Rat era — in fact, he moved here from New York only four years ago. But he’s since become a first-class scene booster, even taking the stage at many an Abbey show to play enthused acoustic versions of punk classics. Heavy Stud were the first band he saw at the Abbey, but it didn’t take him even that long to feel at home. "I walked in one night, Michelle was working the door, and the first three songs I heard on the jukebox were Kiss, Cheap Trick, and the Ramones. That’s when I knew it was my kind of place." Having put out some punk records on his NYC-based Melted Records, Mansdorf teamed with the club’s co-owner, Jay Grimaldi, to start Abbey Lounge Records.

The label hasn’t turned a major profit just yet, but there have been enough sales to keep the flow of releases going, with the Dents/Street Dogs disc moving enough copies (2500 between vinyl and CDs) to be a relative hit. The Coffin Lids plan to tape a live album later this month, and other club favorites are being lined up as possibilities — though Mansdorf has already turned down some of his NYC cohort, preferring to keep the label Boston-centric. The current plan is to keep the bands on the road, aim for college radio and indie-press exposure, and work the grassroots. "We’re doing this because we love to work — me, I’m fine getting up at 6:30 in the morning. Our main goal is to work as hard as the bands do, if not harder."

The Dents play CD-release parties at the Abbey Lounge, 3 Beacon Street in Inman Square, this Friday and Saturday, February 4 and 5; call (617) 441-9631.