Two Gentlemen Band - Heavy Petting

• iTunes
• Amazon
• Insound
• emusic

One of the more surreal moments I have experienced in the last year or so was seeing two grown adult men decked out in full 1920s era dress, devilishly smiling and playing Big Buck Hunter in a dimly lit Brooklyn bar. Later I was relieved to find out I had not been on a bad acid trip and was in fact at a Two Gentlemen Band concert. The Two Gentleman Band is a funny and raunchy swing/jazz/retro act from Long Island with a knack for taking important United States history events and turning them into awesomely laid folk ditties. Comprising the wry S. Andy Bean (banjo, kazoo, percussion, and vocals) and the sturdy Fuller Condon, a.k.a. "The Councilman" (upright bass, kazoo, vocals), the Gentlemen have been taking their swing time show on the road since before the release of their eponymous 2005 debut. In 2006, they released their sophomore effort, the aptly titled Great Calamities, which included songs like "The Hindenburg Disaster" and "The War of Northern Aggression". Now they release their third full-length to date, Heavy Petting, which finds the band playing mostly up-tempo, jazz-inflected numbers that once again use subjects of US history as metaphors for sex, love and rock and roll.

Hearkening back to Vaudeville and the comic song tradition, tunes like "William Howard Taft" and "They Can't Prohibit Love" could easily have been written in the '20s or '30s, and, for the most part, it's this masterful pastiche that makes The Two Man Gentlemen Band the riot that they are both onstage and on record. "Dippin' Sauce" and "When Your Lips Are Playing My Kazoo" are drenched in sexual innuendo, while "The Big Strong Man" is a rendition of a traditional Irish song that tells of a Paul Bunyan/John Henry-type figure ("He drank all the water in the sea/ and he walked all the way to Italy"). "On the Badminton Court" boasts the hilarious refrain, "You spoke vulgar language/ Here's my retort/ Gonna smack your shuttlecock around that badminton court." It is a great group of songs that makes you want to put on a tux and bop your cane to the beat.

On "The Square Root of Two", Bean sings, "My love is like the square root of two/ That's a nerdy way to flirt but, oh, it's true," and this music is nerdy. Okay, maybe it's not Weird Al, but a song like "William Howard Taft," for instance, is definitely in the running for the kind of thing that a really awkward kid with a peach-fuzz moustache brings in to play for your high school history teacher on the day you study The Roarin' '20s. The same might be said of the supremely cheesy "Unicycle Blues" ("You took my heart and my bicycle and you tore them both in two"), but no one who's worth a cent would consider being a dork a bad thing.

Changing pace, the album closer "Newtown Creek," is a finely crafted ballad that serves as moving proof that The Gentlemen can be serious when the mood strikes. Laying aside his usual breakneck whimsy and outside-the-carnival sense of humor, if only for a moment, Bean drawls soberly over a stately piano, "So I hurl myself into the deep/ And I hold my breath until I fall asleep/ The only girl I ever wanted to keep/ Is lying at the bottom of Newtown Creek."

In the end, Heavy Petting is a great record full of brazen wit and fun folk minded songs. If you like the wit of David Sedaris and music from big band greats Benny Goodman or Gene Krupa, you will simply adore the Gents. Put on your top hat and shine your shoes on the way to pick up their album.

Corey Crossfield is an avid music fan who has recently rediscovered Patti Smith.