Album Review - The Gaslight Anthem - '59 Sound

If you are like me, you don't have a very large attention span so I'll do one short review and one longer one.



Short review:

Buy this album



Long review:



I've ready hundreds, probably thousands of reviews in my lifetime and one of the things that is hardest to define (and often wrong) is a reviewer's description of who the band sounds like. After all, when being introduced to a new band don't we all want to know they share something with bands we already know and love. This inevitably leads to any rock band out of New Jersey being labeled either "Sounds like Springsteen" or "Sounds like Bon Jovi".



I hate these classifications for two reasons

1. Often times it is far far from the truth. When I hear a band described as "Like the Who" only they have basic drumming and no rhythm section to speak of it makes me angry. Often times after hearing that, I'm left disappointed that the sound doesn't live up to the Who. And most bands can't.

2. It's just plain lazy in most instances. Just like when comparing athletes, white athletes are compared to other white athlethes and black athletes are compared to other black athletes. The comparison is made on visual similarities not actual styles of play. Just become a band is from the same area and has the same look of another band, does not mean those two are automatically related.


That said when I first listened to a few of this band's songs, I described them to a friend of mine as a punkish mix between Springsteen and The Killers and this was BEFORE I found out any other information about them.

The Springsteen similarity is what makes this band stand out from what I associate with "generic punk" music. The rhythm section plays punk, but the vocal stylings are much more melodic and rock based while the lyrics are often times like alt-country and can be very poignant at times. Also there are numerous references to other artists, which for some reason always wins points in my heart.

There are references to Tom Petty, Bob Seger, Counting Crows and (obviously) Springsteen.

"At night I wake up with the sheets soaking wet,
It's a pretty good song maybe you know the rest"

If the Springsteen point hasn't been pounded home yet, do a YouTube search for them performing one of the Boss's underrated songs "I'm On Fire".

All in all the lyrics long for a time when music was actually music not overproduced marketing. While Green Day churns out another mediocre album, the mantle of melodic punk deserves to be passed on to bands such as this. In a small way though, even though this band deserves to hit it big, I kind of hope they don't so they can continue to produce music like this.

Key Songs: The '59 Sound, Old White Lincoln, Here's Looking At You Kid, High Lonesome