Gaslight Anthem Album Review - The '59 Sound

Gaslight Anthem CD review
Matthew Winters

The Gaslight Anthem is the little band from New Jersey that could. They rose out of a scene that spawned the bands Saves the Day, Thursday, Senses Fail, and a gaggle of other emo/screamo bands in the early part of this century. They climbed aboard the XOXO Records roster and released last year's slow burner "Sink or Swim."

The album was a combination of fast punk anthems about the old days and good friends and quiet acoustic numbers about the one that got away. Then with a rigorous touring regimen, the band was noticed by the punk stalwart label Sabot Productions (the company that released some of Against Me!'s first recordings) and released the four-song EP "The Senor & The Queen" less than a year later.

These songs were mostly fast punk numbers about leaving town with a party, but it hinted that something was headed in a different direction with the closer. "Blue Jeans & White T-Shirts" is a one-in-a-million song that is all at the same time sad, resentful, hopeful, and bright, and it has the kind of nostalgia that only people who have lived life can relate to.

That type of nostalgia is what drives their third effort in just more than a year, "The 59' Sound." On this record, the boys from New Jersey owe a deep debt to the aching beauty of classic soul singers and many of the earnest punk bands that have ever recorded, but most of all they owe a big part of their sound to the Boss, Bruce Springsteen. Singer Brian Fallon, drummer Benny Horowitz, guitarist Alex Rosamilia, and bassist Alex Levine drive down many of the roads that Springsteen drove down on classics like "Blinded by the Light," "Born to Run," and the perfect "Thunder Road."

They talk about lives that may or may not have happened in the songs "Even Cowgirls Get The Blues" and album opener "Great Expectations" where Brian Fallon sings "I saw daylights / last night / in a dream / about my first wife" as if he lived through this all before. The album is mass of these statements that are wonderful for emotional appeal but the listener wonders if these are actual events.

In the end, though, it does not matter. Like any good artist, the illusion is sustained and the subject matter is considered true. So when Fallon sings in the title track, "I wonder which song they're gonna play when we go / I hope something quiet and minor and peaceful and slow" you can't help but sing along. You can't help but mean it, too.

Originally Published in The WSU Signpost 8/27/08