Standing Tall, on the Shoulders of Giants The Gaslight Anthem - The '59 Sound 4.5/5 One thing about modern mainstream punk/emo that I’ve never been able to reconcile myself with is its slickness, the way the immaculate cleanliness of its production and composition is juxtaposed with its (ostensible) heart-on-sleeve emotiveness. I’m no punk purist, but the soundtrack to rebellion and heartbreak should put its riffs where its mouth is, and the likes of Rise Against and (later) Against Me! just aren’t enough of a mouthful. In recent years the form has solidified to that point where experimentation (or, more bluntly, genre-fusion) becomes de rigueur for the ambitious. It happens to every genre, given time. Right now, we seem to be seeing nothing but ill-fated marriages, from Green Day’s hamfisted rock opera to My Chemical Romance’s sallow theatrics, Brand New’s vaguely prog window-dressing to Panic at the Disco’s Sgt. Pepper fixation. The problem, at least from my well-past-adolescent expiry date, is that none of these minglings have done much of anything to sate my hunger for authenticity, some singalongs that I can actually throw the whole of my lungs into. In many respects, The Gaslight Anthem’s second LP, The ’59 Sound, is the record I’ve been looking for. These are songs steeped in the heartfelt arena rock of Bruce Springsteen, every song about tangled relationships and difficult youth, those teenage emotions that were always so difficult to articulate at the time here hollered out to the cheap seats in the guise of thunderous rock and roll. Listening to it, nodding along, picking up those lyrical fragments which just jump out at you for some reason, like they were set to paper and sung directly into your brain, it feels absolutely real. Sonically though, this is not vastly different from the band’s peers. Less bubblegum, certainly, somewhat more reserved perhaps, yet still pretty far removed from anything like grittiness. What is it that makes The ’59 Sound feel so genuine? One factor is obvious. Bluntly, I am easily susceptible to the particular kind of singer-songwriter style which The Gaslight Anthem has so cannily adopted. For me authentic rock and roll is John Mellencamp, is Husker Du, is Springsteen, is King Bob Seger and his Silver Bullet Band. The funny thing is that I can listen to Brian Fallon sing lyrics like these… I saw tail lights last night in a dream about my first wife. Everybody leaves and I'd expect as much from you. I saw tail lights last night in a dream about my old life. Everybody leaves, so why, why wouldn't you? …and buy it hook, line, sinker and speedboat much as I do Seger’s most nostalgic work, even though Fallon is probably not much older than I am. His lyrics are riddled with references to ’59 sounds and ’55 Lincolns, and while he belts them out with the sureness of a man who was there when such things were new, this simply isn’t possible. One might wonder, then, why he situates his stories in the relatively distant past. Springsteen’s classic records from the ‘70s are as much as anything else a chronicle of youth blown up to mythic proportions. It’s a concept as old as rock and roll, as old as poetry, maybe; Springsteen was just more systematic in his execution than his axe-slinging predecessors. As he got older and more jaded, he started to subvert that mythology, to wear away that façade of adolescent glory to unveil the desperation which drove it. People initially drove old cars in Springsteen’s songs because that’s what they drove in his glory days, and later on increasingly because it was all that they could afford. There is nothing preventing Fallon from updating these ideas to his own youth; there’s plenty of pathos to be drawn from the image of a burnt-out Geo Metro or a Firefly for instance, potentially even more than Fallon finds in that ’55 Lincoln. Updating the scenery could bring it that much closer to the experience of the band’s high school/college-age audience. After all, as fellow Springsteen aficionado Craig Finn of The Hold Steady has proven beyond doubt, the past decade or two is ripe territory for the kind of bombastic rock and roll mythologizing which the Gaslight Anthem aspire to (and often achieve, but more on that later). I think, therefore, that what Fallon is doing is somewhat different from what Springsteen did and Finn does. Fallon already has the skill to tell those kind of world weary, streetwise stories, but he doesn’t yet have the kind of perspective on his own personal history that Springsteen did. Some people never achieve that. What he’s doing, instead, is using Springsteenian (ooh, pretentious) tropes to communicate his own emotions and aspirations. The world of The ’59 Sound is a pastiche, Fallon’s narrative voice a pose, but he’s not really at pains to hide it. Consider the chorus of High Lonesome: And Maria came from Nashville with a suitcase in her hand I always kinda sorta wished I looked like Elvis And in my head there's all these classic cars And outlaw cowboy bands I always kinda sorta wished I was someone else Doesn’t that say it all? Galvanizing opener Great Expectations takes its cue from Dickens’ ultimate tale of unrequited yearning, while addressing itself to “Mary,” who might as well have stepped right of the burnt-out Chevrolets in Thunder Road. Since I feel pretty safe in assuming that Fallon was once a teenage boy, he has felt the pain Springsteen and Dickens wrote so eloquently of, but he doesn’t tell his own story directly. Rather, he pours himself into crafting a rather poignant variation on the theme as his influences depicted it. It might not be an accomplishment on a par with those originals, but this approach creates a remarkable song nonetheless. The way Fallon wears his influences on his sleeves can be jarring, particularly when I realized a piece of Seger’s Hollywood Nights had emerged from an otherwise unfamiliar tune (though not so jarring as hearing Elvis Costello himself arrive without warning on the latest Fall Out Boy, but I digress…), but from the second listen onward it served to deepen the unapologetically nostalgic atmosphere of the song and the record. He doesn’t steal from his influences with these lifts. Instead, it makes clear how much he treasures them, how their music has been a gift which has aided in the making of his own terrific music. And what great use of that gift he makes! Miles Davis & the Cool slots itself in beside R.E.M.’s Supernatural Superserious as 2008’s most effortless shout-along stadium buster, its chorus good enough to keep one’s blood pumping no matter how dark the day, its subtly poetic coda of “As we go down down down / From our youth to the ground” great enough to raise the hair on the back of my neck. The euphoric jangle of Casanova, Baby! should have wiped the airwaves clean of overdone pap like The Killers and The Fray, been sprung from every pair of earbuds from sea to shining sea. It’s an album without a bum track, most of it up-tempo, bravura vocal showcase Even Cowgirls Get the Blues swaggering like prime Tom Petty, even charmingly wry and self-deprecating on obligatory ballad Here’s Looking at You, Kid. The Gaslight Anthem stand on the shoulders of giants a bit more obviously than some, but those shoulders belong to artists whose heart could never be questioned, and The Gaslight Anthem are becomingly upfront about where they come from. The ’59 Sound breaks little new ground, but it is honed to virtual perfection. It’s possible that Fallon will someday write a more personal album, but there’s no guarantee that it’ll be better than this one. This is one of the best records of the past decade and, for a wonder, it’s a record I would feel pretty safe recommending to bleeding hearts of 15 through 55. It’s just damned fine work all around.
I fucking love this album, it is very good. That said, I find a lot of the songs have very similar structures, which at FIRST bugged me. After 3 or 4 listens to it though i was hooked. What did you think of their previous album?
Sink or Swim is also very good, but it lacks the emotional resonance of The '59 Sound. It's much more of a punk record, and I like its edginess, but the songwriting isn't quite there yet. I do think Angry Johnny and the Radio is one of their best songs though.
I like what I've heard by this band, and this Counting Crows reference will get me to listen to the whole album.
I really enjoyed this album and I'm listening to it for the second time now. These guys show some great potential, although I hope the follow-up will be a bit more adventurous. I definitely enjoy The '59 Sound for what it is, though.
Round Here. "Maria came from Nashville with a suitcase in her hand She says she'd like to meet a boy who looks like Elvis"
yes yes quite a lot of advanced words here but i only need to know one thing how amazing or awesome is it?
Well you can see the grade on the third line (4.5/5). It's a terrific, heartfelt record that will stick with you.
The review articulated it much better than I could but it's just so naive yet so charming and infectious that it's impossible not to love
spinning this for the first time, and 'old white lincoln' is one of the catchiest songs i've heard this year. DIGGIN IT.
