The indie heartland rockers around Brian Fallon are making their comeback a top priority.
It is the crowning achievement in Gaslight Anthem’s New Jersey boys narrative that it was Bruce Springsteen who encouraged singer and rhythm guitarist Brian Fallon to reunite the band for a sixth album after a nine-year (studio) break. And not without demanding a duet from him in the form of the title track. Although the boss dialogue “History Books” may be musically inferior to its historical solidarity momentum, the accompanying album as a whole is closer to earlier gaslight brilliant deeds.
The time gap was definitely good for the band (as well as the listeners). If “Positive Charge”, a piece about Fallon’s renewed, life-affirming self-discovery, reaches (almost) the class of the career-defining 2008 album, THE ’59 SOUND, in addition to sensitive, sometimes almost Mumford-esque nuances, it sometimes even lets it rip: For example on this impetuous “Little Fires”, in which Stefan Babcock from the Canadian band PUP also sings along, and which in the verse is reminiscent of the vocal vehemence of Pearl Jam’s punk outbursts – including a garage guitar hero solo.
Or when the basic riff opening of “I Live In The Room Above” brings to mind the grunge gestures of the early Stone Temple Pilots. The Gaslight Anthem always manages to make all the tonal variations their own and respond to them with their characteristic melodic sensitivity, which ultimately culminates in the folk lightness of “A Lifetime Of Preludes”. Welcome back.