I’m always taken a bit by surprise when I re-remember that Paul Weller was barely scraping twenty by the time The Jam released All Mod Cons. And since I was five or six when those Jam records started coming out and was too busy falling out of trees, I got the discography order all jumbled up. Being thirteen or fourteen at the time when I started listening closely to The Jam, I wanted shit as fast and jumpy as possible and All Mod Cons got played last, behind In the City and This Is the Modern World. Count it as the perspective of age, or being here when the timeline’s in real time, but I really dig it when Gentleman Jesse And His Men play a couple of slow burners, like on this 7”. I’m in no way saying that these gentlemen musicians are “onionskin on a lightbox”-ing Bruce Foxton and Co., it’s just that I find myself appreciating their sense of fire and harmony, the bubbling and support of the bass, the vignette-like style of the lyrics, and forlorn-but-fuck-’em attitude. Thumbs up.
–todd (Hozac)