The Gentlemen's Bet will not be playing Spring Fling this year, and that's really a shame. The band's self-released, full-length debut album, "From a Great Height" (2009), offers a diverse array of well-arranged songs that would be fantastic to listen to outside on a sunny day. Listeners new to the band's style of rock are sure to find at least a couple of songs that feel instantly familiar on an LP that is by turns both energetic and introspective.
Formed at Tufts in the winter of 2006, The Gentlemen's Bet includes seniors Alex Clough (keyboard), Aaron Gardony (bass), Andrew Lappin (lead guitar and producer), Dusty Nichols-Schmolze (guitar and vocals), Joey Stein (drums), sophomore Malcolm Kearns (saxophone) and junior trumpeters Mark Adams and Zach Amdurer. The band released a self-titled, four-song EP in 2007. Weighing in at 10 tracks, "From a Great Height" represents a big step forward for the band, both in terms of quality and musical style.
The album kicks off with the aptly named blues-rocker "Good Times." Carefully layered horns, pounding drums, rollicking piano and raunchy guitar compliment Nichols-Schmolze's unrepentant vocals. Above all, the song plays like a call to action, a summons that enthusiastically welcomes the listener to the album the same way that the song could welcome an audience in a live setting.
Unfortunately, "Good Times" is atypical of the album; The Gentlemen's Bet tends to favor slower and often darker ballads, like "Beverly," "Zodiac" and "Silver" over the more joyous sounds of its opening track. This is not necessarily a bad thing, as the band nevertheless puts in a solid effort. However, it does significantly cut down on the energy and pace of "From a Great Height." On some of these more ominous numbers, Nichols-Schmolze's vocals feature a ghostly reverb effect à la Jim James of My Morning Jacket. While his high-pitched crooning is on key, it sometimes feels over the top, as though it were an afterthought to the rest of the song.
Just as there are minor ballads, there are also laid-back, major-key tunes. Two numbers in particular, the funky "In the Riverbed" and the chilled-out, bluesy "Swiss Miss Shores" show that the band is equally comfortable kicking out the slow jams. Melodic and relaxing, these songs are reminiscent of slow soul, falling thematically somewhere near Soulive, John Mayer or Westbound Train.
Perhaps most importantly, this debut album goes a long way toward fulfilling the traditional mission of a debut album in that it attempts to capture and replicate in-studio the dynamics of the band's live show. The Gentlemen's Bet performed some of the album's tracks at the ROCKUS Battle of the Bands Semi-Final, and while its sound is more polished in some respects on the record, it is not fundamentally altered. Listening to the songs on "From a Great Height," one gets the feeling that the band could easily be performing in a live setting just as skillfully. With eight of the 10 tracks on the album clocking in at longer than five minutes, one gets the sense that none of the jamming inherent in its live set has been significantly cut.
Nor have the tones of instruments been noticeably enhanced. In an independent music world that is all too frequently plagued with unnecessary noise-based art rock, The Gentlemen's Bet have eschewed excessive studio wizardry for the more simplistic, classic-rock sound of their genre. The band achieves an authenticity that the rock listener is sure to appreciate.
Overall, "From a Great Height" is an admirable first effort from a student band that evades characterization, dancing between rock, funk, jazz and soul with uncommon agility. It's unfortunate that that this agility won't be a part of Spring Fling, but the album gives listeners a fairly reliable idea of what that performance would sound like.
