21st Century American; Blondes Prefer the Gentlemen

For his ambitious second solo turn, Gravel Pit frontman Parish makes like a New English Ray Davies, offering oddball — and oddly soulful — paeans to trains, clocks, even rotary phones. On their second album, the Gentlemen (the rest of Boston’s Gravel Pit, plus Mike Gent of New York power-poppers the Figgs) party like it’s 1979 — channeling Elvis Costello, the Jam, and Kiss, while delivering enough hooks to suspend a naked Pavarotti in a modern-primitive ritual. American: B+ Gentlemen: A-