Hometown: Atlanta,
Ga.
Fun Fact: Album
track “Butterfingers” was inspired by a candy-loving Caravans
song called “Three Musketeers” from a hard-to-find Hipsville
Records compilation.
Why He’s Worth
Watching: Gentleman Jesse’s irrepressible ditties are as
refreshing as dousing your face in a cool pool of water on a sweaty
summer day—if the water also has a magical chemical content that
impelled you to twist and shout and shake your fist.
For Fans Of: Elvis
Costello, Exploding Hearts, Wreckless Eric
Crafting a lyrical hook to
stimulate crowd participation is feat enough for most musicians, but
Atlanta power-pop maestro “Gentleman” Jesse Smith extends his art
to guitar solos. “My rule is that you should be able to sing them,”
he says. “That's why I don't like Jimmy Page. I love Led Zeppelin,
but I wouldn't ever want to emulate his guitar playing because you
can't sing his solos. They're way too coked out.”
When Pete Townshend coined
the term “power pop” back in 1967 to describe the pithy,
clattering tracks The Who were playing at the time, it didn’t
stick. But Smith is happy to expound upon the genre’s path since
then, plucking at his not-quite-handlebar mustache as he orates.
“There are blues-punk bands, like The Oblivians, stuff like that,
which is a big foundation. And Teengenerate, people doing obscure
punk sound from wherever. It can go from soul music, pop music,
British invasion. It all comes out.”
The genealogical morass
doesn’t much worry the Gentleman, whose recent debut LP
demonstrates this impassioned study of forebears. In fact, he finds
categorization encouraging. “Everything’s been done,” Smith
says. “So when there’s a blueprint that you can work with, and
the foundation is there and you’re let loose to do whatever you
want within this—it’s probably the most artistically freeing
thing I can think of. If you do something that takes a left turn that
makes it original, then good for you. But it’s painstaking to try
to be original. It’s tedious, and it’s no fun.”
As it turns out, Smith’s
own left turn is delectable. His penchant for the aggressive—fueled
by years of brandishing bass and guitar in the more straightforwardly
punk quintet The Carbonas—has not been abandoned. But here the grit
gets sanded down and scaffolded with multi-tracked sweetness, all
harmonized and hook-laden, each part calibrated to achieve maximum
catchiness and congeniality.
Even the verbal content is
more about pop intoxication than wordsmithing. Like songs of the
early Beatles, which he refers to as “the quintessential power-pop
band,” Smith sings of girls and related despair—but only because
lyrics are a necessary evil. “If I could get away just saying
‘Words, words, words, words, words,’ I would,” he admits,
downplaying his considerable knack for fashioning catchphrase
refrains.
Considering his gift for
it, it’s strange that packing songs dense with such ebullience was
not always to be the central focus for the project. “There was a
time when pop music didn't mean anything to me,” he says,
confessing that he was originally going to start a “weird punk
band.” But as the power-pop factor in Smith’s aural repertoire
swelled, a friend encouraged him to head in that direction, and after
months of four-tracking demos, Smith enlisted his and others’ help
to open for fellow Atlantans Black Lips.
These days, as the album
brings some notoriety, Smith is slowly learning the strange life of a
frontman. “I've been getting recognized by people I don't know,
which is weird. The mustache helps,” he admits, still pulling at
its ends. “But it's gotta go soon. Once it becomes a 'thing', then
it goes.” A surprising sentiment from someone so willing to take
conventions and make them his own, but it’s appropriate that
Gentlemen Jesse keeps his focus on pop cocktails rather than fashion.
After all, elixirs this satisfying will be around long after the
lasts wisps of facial hair are shaved away.
Listen to Gentleman
Jesse's infectious and sadly out of print single, "I Don't Wanna Know," on
his MySpace page. Buy his self-titled, debut
full-length from the Douchemaster Records website.