Mid-Year 2016: The Best Albums I've Heard So Far

Let's be honest: mid-year lists are kind of superfluous. I expect that my opinions on the records below will continue to shift. Add six months' worth of new releases, and my list come December will almost certainly look nothing like this one does. With that said, I've heard a lot of great albums this year, and I wanted an opportunity to reflect and think about which ones have resonated the most. All 10 of these records (plus the bonus EP) get the highest recommendation from me.

Happy July and happier listening!

1. Parker Millsap - The Very Last Day

With a force-of-nature voice, a sharp talent for storytelling, and more than a bit of wit and charisma, Parker Millsap weaves The Very Last Day into 2016's best album—so far, anyway. He's only 23 years old and this is only his second record, but when you hear him wail on "You Gotta Move" or spin a tale about the homosexual son of a preacher on "Heaven Sent," you might swear he's got twice that many under his belt.
 

2. Sturgill Simpson - A Sailor's Guide to Earth

Sturgill Simpson's breakthrough record, 2014's Metamodern Sounds in Country Music, was an explosion of classic country, tinged with psychedelia. The Kentucky singer/songwriter paints with an even broader brush on the follower up, A Sailor's Guide to Earth—to the point where many of his fans cried betrayal and bitched about it not being "country enough." Fuck that. On this record, "country music" is anything Simpson wants it to be. He pulls in influences from a dozen genres to create a love letter to his new son, from soul to progressive rock to grunge and beyond.

3. Brian Fallon - Painkillers

On his first solo record, the frontman from The Gaslight Anthem opts out of reinventing the wheel. Instead, he surges straight down the center of the highway, writing songs that feature his usual mix of classic rock, folk, Americana, and references to favorite songs and movie stars. If you wanted a more polarizing record in the vein of Gaslight's Get Hurt, you were probably disappointed by Painkillers. This album, though, showcases Brian Fallon as an artist who knows what he does well and is perfectly content to put out a record that emphasizes strength of songwriting craft over surprises. The decision to hold steady pays off, with cuts like "A Wonderful Life," "Rosemary," and "Open All Night" ranking among his best ever.

4. The 1975 - I like it when you sleep…

On their debut, 2013's self-titled album, The 1975 were a pop band willing to draw as much from emo as they were from boy bands. They were unique, but not flamboyantly so. On the follow up, though, these boys from Manchester transform into the most audacious band currently making music. Long ambient interludes transition into straight-up pop jams, while the album's most John Hughes soundtrack-worthy anthem ("This Must Be My Dream") is just two tracks away from a raw acoustic heartbreaker ("Nana"). The record—like its title—is a hair unwieldy, but start combing the tracklist for inessential songs and you'll make an interesting discovery: there aren't any.

5. The Hotelier - Goodness

 

When it comes to scene classics, it's usually not very hard to tell what's going to stand the test of time. From the first time I listened to Goodness, it sounded like something that kids were going to be discovering 10 years down the road, in the same way that they still discover stuff like Clarity. Less catchy and intense than its predecessor, 2014's Home, Like NoPlace Is There, Goodness is also much more life-affirming, trading the dark emotional doldrums of Home for flickers of love, wistful reflection, and uplift. The songs aren't always as striking as the ones from the last album, but some of them—like "Opening Mail for My Grandmother" and "End of Reel"—are as viscerally engaging as anything this band has ever written.

6. Josh Kelley - New Lane Road

To the outside eye, Josh Kelley peaked early in his career, landing a minor hit off his 2003 debut album with "Amazing." Fast-forward 13 years, though, and Kelley is the rare, almost unheard-of artist who is making his best music with his eighth full-length. A collision of pop, soul, country, folk, and even a little bit of gospel, New Lane Road is as instantly timeless as new albums come. Kelley's voice has always been his not-so-secret weapon, so smooth and delicate one minute and full of force the next. Here, he parlays it into more than a few remarkable moments of pathos, with the bookends ("It's Your Move" and "Only God Can Stop Her Now") standing out most clearly.

7. Maren Morris - Hero

The hooks on Maren Morris's major label debut are so huge that it's not hard to see why she is being heralded as the new country "It" girl. On songs like "Sugar," "Rich," and "80s Mercedes," she effortlessly combines wit, sense for melody, and girl power into an irresistible sound that isn't quite pop and isn't quite country. It's on the ballads where Morris really sets herself apart from the crowd, though, with the likes of "I Could Use a Love Song," "I Wish I Was," and the soaring "Once" sounding like iconic classics in the making.

8. Donovan Woods - Hard Settle, Ain't Troubled

Donovan Woods has always been a talented songwriter, but Hard Settle, Ain't Troubled, his fourth full-length, takes his chops to the next level. More experienced as a writer now than he was a few years ago (having landed songs on a few albums by major Nashville country artists), he conveys different kinds of desolation here with an eye for detail and a clear willingness to twist the knife. From the fracturing relationship of "On the Nights You Stay Home" to the universal regret of "The First Time," all the way to the roller coaster of emotions that defines "Leaving Nashville," Woods will break your heart at least half a dozen times on this record.

9. Sister Hazel - Lighter in the Dark

And here I thought I'd outgrown Sister Hazel. One of my favorite bands from childhood, this roots rock act from Gainesville hadn't made a record that resonated with me since 2006's Absolutely. Lighter in the Dark revitalizes their sound, taking the band in the most overtly "country" direction of their career. The result is a bona-fide summer soundtrack, crammed with road-trip-ready anthems ("Fall off the Map," "Run Highway Run"), classic rock throwbacks (the Eagles-flavored "Prettiest Girl at the Dance"), and dusky, lantern-lit ballads ("Ten Candle Days"). Suffice to say I've reached for this album a lot for runs or long drives on sunny days.
 

10. Brandy Clark - Big Day in a Small Town

Brandy Clark's sophomore record is a bit glossier than her debut (2013's 12 Stories), but don't mistake this album as a mainstream sellout maneuver. Clark is still one of the best songwriters in the country music genre, and this record includes at least five of the year's best compositions. Clark can spin a great chorus (the gorgeous and wistful "Homecoming Queen," or the anthem of heartbreak that is "Love Can Go to Hell"), but her secret weapon is the details: the son who can't talk about his late father until after he's had a couple drinks in "Since You've Gone to Heaven," or the single mother in "Three Kids, No Husband" whose only moments to herself come during smoke breaks at work. At her best, Clark's understanding of the beaten and downtrodden is almost Springsteen-level.

EP: Steve Moakler – Steve Moakler

If Steve Moakler's self-titled EP were a few songs longer, I would have been tempted to include it on this list. Moakler's brand of pop country is breezy summertime fare, but his unique voice and his eye for detail elevate his songs above anything and everything on country radio these days. "Summer without Her" is what Dashboard Confessional's Dusk and Summer might have sounded like if Chris Carrabba had taken a more Nashville-driven approach, while "Suitcase" has a hook that should make Moakler famous. Here's hoping that we'll see a full-length before year's end.

Interview: Brian Fallon (February 4th, 2016)

Last week, I had the chance to sit down and chat on the phone with the great Brian Fallon. The interview runs a range of topics, including the inspiration behind Fallon's folk-heavy new solo album Painkillers (due March 11th), working with Butch Walker, the uncertain future of The Gaslight Anthem, favorite Springsteen songs, and the intriguing possibility of an Elsie: Part II.

 

 
You've done a bunch of solo shows already, where you've been playing all of the songs on this record, plus some Horrible Crowes stuff and a cover or two, but no Gaslight material. How did you feel fans were responding to the songs?

So far, it's been good. You know, it's a lot to ask of people to go out and just play new songs that they don't know, and expect them to be quiet and have an attention span of any kind. But they've been doing really well, and they've been just kind of absorbing the music, which is cool because I've always kind of thought of myself and my friends as music listeners. We kind of absorb everything and pay attention to what's going on, and I'm finding out the audience is doing that as well. They're kind of shifting with me, which is really more than you could ever ask of anybody.

You've always had a folk-leaning song or two on the Gaslight albums, and there's plenty of Americana influence, but you guys have never gone full folk or alt-country. What drove you in that singer/songwriter direction for this album?

Well I think that's where I started playing music, in general, when I was really young and before I'd decided anything on my own about what musical taste I had. So, it kind of seemed natural, if you're going to try something new, to start from the beginning. And go back to "what did I get into music for in the beginning?" And it was also a little bit of a re-focusing as well. You know, why did I start doing this in the beginning? And what made me happy about it? And what did I get enjoyment from?

A few of these songs turned up, in different forms, as part of the Molly and the Zombies project a few years ago, but you made it clear at the time that you weren't planning on doing an album for Molly. What's the story behind that side project and how did you know that...I mean, were you saving those songs for the solo record, or did you just not think you were ever going to end up using them for an album project?

I knew that, at the time, I wasn't going to do anything with it. And I was just sitting there, thinking of the songs as I was going, because we got a show offer from the Bouncing Souls to do the Home for the Holidays thing, and they wanted me to do it by myself. But I didn't really have songs, and I didn't want to just go and do acoustic Gaslight songs, because I didn't think that would be that cool for that kind of crowd. So I decided, "I'm just going to kind of make up a band."

And then I called a couple of my friends to play in it, and it sort of...quickly, I had the idea that when I used to go to shows—and like house shows and VFW Hall shows—and I would see bands. You know, you would see a new band and you couldn't...maybe they had a demo tape and that was it. And you had to wait for a record and there wasn't any record, and it was just, if you liked the songs, you went and saw them again.

So I kind of had this idea that, what if we just made a band and played some songs and I don't know if there's ever going to be a record or any kind of recorded versions. And if people want to see it again, they just come check it out.

That was the initial idea behind Molly and the Zombies. And then it kind of fizzled because I was just so busy with Gaslight, and then I decided...like, I didn't really want to do another band. It's just...it's a lot of bands, you know?! I can't do them all at once, so I sort of said...once I knew that Gaslight was going to take a break and I was going to do some sort of record—because right away, well I gotta do something. I'm not just going to sit here and do nothing for a while.

So I decided that I would take all the bands that I had, the side projects, and kind of wrap them into one. And then I thought awhile about recording those Molly and the Zombies songs. I was like, "Maybe I shouldn't? Maybe I should just make new songs and have it only be new songs?" But then I was like, "Well these songs are good though, I don't want to throw them out." And the people who know Molly and the Zombies is...I mean, there might be 200 people who know who that is. (Laughs) You know, I don't think that the rest of the world is going to be too disappointed. You know what I mean? Like, it's gonna be a new song! The reach of Molly and the Zombies is not that far. (Laughs)

Right, yeah, the version of those songs I have on my computer I think is like the Red Bull Sessions or something, so...

Yeah, they're just live. We just went in there and played them. And the thing is that the songs sound a little bit different now. They're not so...country-ish.

Yeah, they're definitely not the same.

No. And they kind of feel different, and I felt good about that. You know, I explained that to [producer] Butch [Walker] when I was going to go record them. I was like, "You gotta make 'em sound different, or else there's no point in recording them."

Right. Yeah, one of them...is it "Long Drives" that has different verses completely?

Yes, it's a totally different song. That one, I just kind of...I was like "I don't know if I'm just going to...if I'm going to put this one on there"—I struggled with whether to put it on there or not—and I said "Alright, well this one I'm going to draw the line at." If I'm going to put this on there, I can't record it the way that it was, because I didn't feel that it went along with the rest of the songs. And there's people who would probably disagree with that, but...you know, I was kind of the only one there to ask! I figured it would be better if I was going to put three of them on there that I would change the whole thing and rewrite it right now, as a fresh song.

Yeah, because I was listening to it, and I think "Long Drives" was the one I liked the most from the Molly and the Zombies thing, but I hadn't listened to it in awhile...

Yeah, it's one of my favorites too.

So then I put it on, and when the verse came on I was like, "...is this even the same song?" And then it got to the chorus, which was familiar. But yeah, that was pretty cool to hear.

It's like a little adjustment period. But then I think, once it settles in...I would say to people that like the old version, I would say I like the old version too. I like them both. But just give it a second, because once it sinks in with you I think it's kind of cool.

So, speaking of Butch, full disclosure: I'm a huge fan of his music, been a huge fan for like a decade, and I interviewed him last year when he released Afraid of Ghosts, so I was excited when I heard you were recording with him. I was wondering how you ended up working with him and what that was like compared to some of the people who have produced the Gaslight albums, like Brendan O'Brien and Mike Crossey and Ted Hutt.

Well, Butch came about mostly through friend recommendations. That's how his name got thrown in the pot. Because I was sort of looking around for a producer, and I said "You know, I probably should work with somebody that I haven't worked with before, because I don't want to repeat anything that I've done." I didn't want it to be...I didn't want it to get the Gaslight treatment. I didn't want the record to have that, which people will automatically do. I find that, if you've done a band for a long time, people will...before you've even played a note...you could have a disco record and they would put the slapback vocal on it, because that's what Gaslight does. And you'd just be like, "No, come on!" Don't just rehash the same thing. Then we might as well call up the guys and get them in here.

Right, for sure.

And if you're going to do something different...you know, I figured we would try something different. And when I talked to Butch, it was real easy. He started coming up with ideas right away. He was like "Okay, you've always done a little bit of reverb or echo on the vocals, so we're going to do nothing on the vocals." You know, we're gonna leave them...just bare. And then, he was just like "We're just going to go in and record it, pretty much on the floor, and see how we do with it." And it was pretty immediate. So running into him and having him be such a fan of...of music in general, that was really easy to work with.

A lot of guys that we've worked with...like, Brendan is super good at the rock thing. He's really great at big rock sounds and stuff like that. And Ted is kind of...he's just another world. Ted's really...he does everything from the heart. Ted's really artistic and he's got a whole way about him. I love working with Ted, actually. And Mike is like a sound guy. Mike loves sounds. And this, it was totally like...get in there and don't worry about anything and just sort of sit down, and do it, and leave the mistakes in. That's foreign to me: usually the mistakes are gone.

Right, yeah! That's really cool. And Butch plays some guitar on this record too, right?

Yeah, it was like me and Butch just playing guitar! Pretty much the whole record is just me and Butch playing guitar. (Laughs)

That's really cool. So, I personally really enjoyed Gaslight's last record, Get Hurt. And I think I spoke to Benny for that one the morning it came out, and he was super excited about it. And then it got super mixed reviews and some pretty harsh pans from like Pitchfork and Slant and those guys. Did that in any way lead to the band's decision to go on a hiatus instead of keeping up with the every-two-year release strategy?

I wouldn't say that those reviews gave any...you know, they didn't come into the band. I don't think you can make your band decisions based on what one or two people think. And I would definitely say that...that kind of thing, you can't let that play into what your band's decisions are. But I'm not going to sit here and say, personally, that that didn't bother me. I mean, for sure it did. And I think the guys took it a lot better than I did. Like Benny for instance, he's got a great head on his shoulders where he...he kind of was like "Yeah, but that's just what a few people think." Like, we were doing something a little oddball-y. Of course people are going to do that. And he's like "Some people are gonna love it, some people are gonna hate it," but he's like "I was ready for that."

And, you know...I agreed with him on that aspect. But I also felt that it got a little personal. It got a little bit more...not necessarily about the band or the record, but about what [the critics] thought I was doing. You know, like what my intentions were on some of them. And I was like...these are people I've never met. That's a low blow to be throwing on somebody you've never met. I wouldn't say that kind of stuff about someone I hadn't spoken to, or done an interview with, or whatever. I think you can make an assessment based on a record, but you can't make an assessment on a person's intentions, you know? That seems a little far-fetched, and to be honest, a little self-righteous.

But you guys toured a lot in support of that record, right? Like, I don't know if it was the most touring you ever did, but it seemed like you were on the road for awhile and there were multiple tours. And at the shows I went to, at least, it seemed like the fan reception for those songs was pretty good still.

Yeah, it was a divided thing. I don't want to say it was like, all of the critics didn't like it, because some people said it was awesome. And that seemed to be the dividing line: it was either people thought it was awesome, or people just didn't like it at all. So there wasn't really a middle ground which...I guess that's good? But the kids at the shows seemed to like it, and that was, I thought, encouraging.
Because truthfully, I'm not writing songs for reviewers or magazines. I'm writing songs for myself and for the audience that we play for. That's who I feel matters in the big picture. That's always been the start of it: you're trying to communicate with your audience directly. And so those are the people that you're shooting for. And so they seemed to embrace it, which is cool. But yeah, there was definitely a divide. I think we got some of the harshest criticism but then some of the praise was pretty good too. It was mixed, and we hadn't done that in awhile. People kind of tend to like the records that we had put out prior to that. We were lucky in that sense, that people seemed to really gravitate toward the other records.

So what is the...is there a next thing for Gaslight right now, or are you sort of just playing it by ear? I know Sink or Swim turns 10 next year, so I was wondering if you guys were going to get into the 10-year tour thing?

Oh no. We're not usually the kind of band to sit around and dwell on those sort of things. I think it's cool if people do that. Mile-markers and stuff like that. But I don't know if that would be something that we would do, because it would just be doing it "Just because." Like, unless there was a reason to do it. You know, unless we all got super pumped on it and were like, "Alright, we're gonna go out and do this."

But as of right now, there's not really plans to do anything, because there hasn't been...there's just not the "What's next?" feeling, you know? What do you do now? To me, if you ask me, I can't imagine a record that we could write that would be better than 59 Sound or Senor and the Queen, actually. Those two records to me—I like all the records—but those two records to me are great. I love them. And I don't know what I can do that's better than that. And I think that, until I found something that I think is on par to that, I don't think I would try to touch it, because I don't want to do anything that's gonna damage the band as we go on. And I feel that everyone else kind of agrees with me on that. And they sort of said, "Well, if we don't have another idea that we all feel strongly about, then maybe we should just do nothing and that's the best bet." You know, rather than just ruin something. Especially half-hearted. That just seems like a big slap in the face to everybody, including the band and myself.

Yeah, especially because you sort of had the routine going where you did a record, and then you went and toured for awhile, and had maybe a few months off, and then you did another record. And it was two years, pretty much down the line. So...

Yeah. I don't think you can do that over and over.

At some point you earn yourself a break.

I do think that. Because, if you just do it just for the sake of...like, why are you doing it? Are you doing it to pay your bills? And then I don't think that's that cool, you know? I don't think it's something you should do. Bill Armstrong from Side One Dummy said the coolest thing to me one time, like, years ago. And this was when there was no money coming in at all, so it was a funny thing to say. But he said "Never put your commerce before your art." And I just always remembered that. I was like...art before commerce, that's the thing. And you have to make the music first from a love of doing the music, rather than "Oh, well, I've got my bills to pay so I better put out a record so people can buy it." That sounds disgusting to me right now, actually saying that out loud. (Laughs)

And, look, I'm not trying to say...we're not a punk band, as far as being...because I don't want to be disrespectful to bands that are punk bands, you know? And that's why I say that. But we do have an ethic that we came up with that's like: look, you don't do this on somebody else's back. You do it for the love, and that's why you do it. And like Tim Barry says, "You play for the lovers, that's what you do." And you know, unless you're 100% sure and backing it, then I don't think you should do anything.

So that's why it's more like, Gaslight decided "Okay, let's just shut up for now, because we don't have anything on the plate that we're pumped about." I'm not sitting on American Idiot in my back pocket or something. I'm not going to release record like that. I think that's an awesome record, American Idiot. Green Day had this big long career, and then they did that, which was pretty...that's surprising. Late in a band's career, to have such a great record come out of them? And so inspired? And I'm not sitting on that right now. (Laughs) I'm kind of sitting on nothing. I don't have any ideas. So that's why, I think...the only idea I would have is to sort of be like, "Alright, I guess that Gaslight sounds like 59 Sound, so let's kind of rehash that." But, to me, that sounds awful. I don't think anybody would want to hear that.

Wow, yeah, I think that's a good way of looking at it. Getting back to the solo record a bit, what inspired your songwriting this time around? I did notice there were a few songs coming from a female perspective, which I thought was interesting.

The whole thing came from the old songwriting tradition that I grew up on, like folk music and singer/songwriter music and that kind of stuff. Because I don't really...like Tom Petty and Bruce Springsteen, I guess they're rock bands, but they're more singer/songwriters. That's what they are. And those guys and all the folk music and even like Wilco and that kind of stuff...I was going back to where I started writing songs from for this one. So it sort of felt really fresh to me—fresh and familiar at the same time—that I could go and delve into these things I hadn't fully gotten to explore previously in my career.

Someone from the site wanted me to ask this: do you have a favorite Bruce Springsteen song?

Oh yeah, I've got a ton of them, actually. A lot of my favorites are really on the Tracks box set. Like that first CD of the Tracks box set. There's this one tune that I always go back to called "Zero and Blind Terry." And I just...I love that song. I feel like it encapsulates everything that Bruce was doing that was different and new, all in one song. It's six or seven minutes long, but it's...it's so rad. And when you listen to that song, you can totally hear how songs like "Jungleland" and "Born to Run" and Thunder Road" and these epics that would come in later. But this song is like the rawest version of a beginning of that, and to me, that's so exciting. It's like hearing the first Against Me! record: it's so rad and raw.

Yeah, it's nuts some of the stuff he didn't put on records.

I know right? (Laughs) There's some good songs!

Are you catching this River tour, by any chance?

I'm not, because I've been traveling around so much. I keep going on tour and I keep missing the shows. But I did just get the box set, that River box set?

Yeah, my brother got that for Christmas. It looked pretty great.

Yeah, I haven't watched [the DVDs] yet, but it's pretty cool. I just bought it.

Yeah, I'm heading down...my brother and I are going to see him in Kentucky I think in two weeks now? Which...I mean, I haven't seen him in like four years, so I'm pretty excited about that.

That's awesome. Last time I saw him was in Nashville. We were recording Get Hurt and he played down at the area there, the Bridgestone Arena. And we all took off early in the session. We were like "Let's go!" And we all went to see Bruce Springsteen. It was cool.

That's great!

(Laughs) We just like, bailed out of our own record to go see Bruce. Like "Forget this, let's go."

Did he know you guys were there? Did he like, call you up to the stage or anything?

Yeah! No, he didn't call me up to the stage, but he knew we were there. We let him know that we were coming and then he was being cool to us and it...he's really cool. I mean, he's real cool to us too, which is nice.

So Jason Tate, I think you've talked to him before, he runs AbsolutePunk. And his favorite record of yours is Elsie, the Horrible Crowes record. So I was wondering, on his behalf, do you ever see there being another Horrible Crowes record? Or is it sort of at this point like, if you're going to write something that's not Gaslight it's probably just going to be solo?

Well, I mean, if I was going to do another Horrible Crowes record, it would probably be under my own name, just for the reason that I gave before, so that it's all wrapped up into one. But I definitely have a desire to do a "part two" of that, and that was my first idea when Gaslight was like "Okay, we're gonna take a break." My first idea was like, "Maybe I can do another Horrible Crowes record. But I couldn't think of anything in that genre that would be better than Elsie, so I was like...I don't know if I want to start diving into that one. Because that's special to me. That record is...I love that record! And I still listen to it, even. So for me, I would have to get into it, and really see if I could find something that was as good as that. I would probably just do it under my name, but it's definitely on the plate to do something like that again.

And Ian Perkins is still touring with you for this anyway, right?

Yeah, he's always there. So yeah, it wouldn't change anything. Like, Ian would still have a part of it, and he would still...everything would stay the same. It would just be the name on the record that would be different, but everything else would still be the same record. I mean, I'd probably call Ted for that too, and say "Well, you gotta do this next one, because we did the first one." I would probably get exactly the same people and not change a thing.

Right, yeah, totally. But I'm pretty pleased that you went the country route more for this one, because I think it really suits...like, the instrumentation is really nice. On songs like "Honey Magnolia," like, I really like that guitar solo in there.

Yeah, me too! That's the thing: you sort of have to just obey what you feel is coming out of you at the time. You can't really control it. So, I felt like [the Americana-influenced sound] was the thing, and I had a lot of things that I'd always wanted to do—like what you were saying, writing in the perspective of a girl. And that's part of the folk tradition: taking on characters and trying to empathize and see from their point of view. And that was really calling and gnawing at me, and I really...I just knew that this was the time and I had to sit down and do this record.

Brian Fallon - Painkillers

There aren't many people in music right now who are under more pressure than Brian Fallon. Labeled as the torchbearer of the classic rock tradition upon the release of 2008's The '59 Sound—the sophomore album from his Jersey-based quartet, The Gaslight Anthem—Fallon has spent the better part of his career not just having to live up to the quality of his own albums and songs, but to his idols as well. A lot of people got into Bruce Springsteen, Tom Petty, and Bob Dylan after hearing consistent references to each in Gaslight's early music. In fact, Gaslight's legacy got so entwined in the "inspired by Springsteen" narrative that fans started requesting Bruce songs at shows. Even Fallon's side project, the Horrible Crowes, got whipped up in the Springsteen tornado, drawing at least a handful of parallels to Nebraska. Let's be honest: figuring out a way to live up to an album as terrific as The '59 Sound is hard enough. Doing it when everyone is comparing your stuff to albums like Born to Run and Damn the Torpedoes is just downright unfair.

In a weird way, then, Painkillers, Fallon's first solo LP, is his opportunity to check all of that baggage at the door. Freed from the shackles of his bands and the fan expectations that go along with them, Fallon finally has the opportunity to sit back, slow things down, and re-evaluate. Solo albums have their own sort of mythos and preconceived notions, but they also come with the assumption that things are going to be different. No one's approaching this album expecting another '59 Sound, because it's not a Gaslight Anthem record. No one's expecting an Elsie part two, either, because The Horrible Crowes isn't the name on the sleeve. By making a record under his own name, Fallon finally has the chance to stop being "Brian Fallon: the next Springsteen" or "Brian Fallon: the savior of rock 'n' roll" and to focus instead on being "Brian Fallon: the songwriter."

With Painkillers, I had an opportunity that music writers don't normally get: the opportunity to hear the album early, absorb the songs, fall in love with them, and then stop listening—all before putting pen to paper to write a single word in judgment of it. I got this album in my inbox before Christmas; I interviewed Brian about it at the beginning of February; then I let it sit for a full month before finally pushing play again. What I discovered when I returned to Painkillers last week was that it already felt like an old favorite. These songs—which straddle the line between folk, alt-country, and classic rock—are so innately well-crafted that they feel like they've been here for years. Once a student of all things rock 'n' roll, Fallon has grown as a songwriter to the point where, on Painkillers, he's become the teacher, and there's no bigger compliment that can be paid to him than that.

The '59 Sound was a great record partially because it was so steeped in homage. If Bob Dylan hadn't already used the title, Love & Theft might have been a fitting name for The Gaslight Anthem's sophomore record, for how frequently Fallon pilfered lyrics wholesale from his favorite artists. It was a trick that could have easily become gimmicky or imitative in lesser hands, but Fallon used it to imbue his music with the vibrancy of a life lived with rock and roll as its guiding light. Listening to The '59 Sound was thrilling not just because it was a great rock record, but also because it so perfectly captured what rock 'n' roll music can be when you love it to the point of insanity. It was a record for soundtracking your life, about music that soundtracked lives.

Painkillers is slightly less meta in its execution, but the spirit of Fallon's songwriting hasn't lost any of its color or life. Right from the glockenspiel chimes of leadoff track and first single "A Wonderful Life," you can tell from every note of this album that it was a labor of love for Fallon. In our interview last month, the frontman-turned-solo-artist told me that, for his first go-it-alone project, he wanted to go back to his roots and channel the classic singer/songwriters he loved in his youth. Perhaps it's because I started my musical journey in a similarly Americana-drenched place, but to me, this record really does feel like coming home. From dusky folk ballads like "Steve McQueen" and "Honey Magnolia" to raucous kick-drum stompers like "Smoke" and "Red Lights" (both repurposed here from Brian's second side project, Molly and the Zombies), Painkillers finds Fallon resting in a pleasant traditional realm. Butch Walker, meanwhile, does career-best work in the producer's chair, giving the songs enough gloss to reflect their classic rock and vintage pop influences, but also leaving in enough dust and dirt to honor the folk music tradition Brian was chasing.

Painkillers always sounds familiar and welcoming, but contrary to what a few fans and critics will say, it only rarely sounds like a Gaslight Anthem album. The clearest reference point is "Rosemary," a rousing rock number that plays like a spiritual cousin to "Here Comes My Man" from 2012's Handwritten. Like that song, "Rosemary" is penned from a female perspective. Also like that song, it builds to one of the biggest, most emotional payoffs in Fallon's catalog. Following a scorching guitar solo from Walker, Fallon dives headlong into one of the best choruses he's ever written:

Now I hear you crying over the phone
Where have all the good times gone?
Down in a glass of shouting matches
Lost in the songs you don't write anymore
But hey, hey, hey, it's alright
I ain't trying to bring you down tonight
And oh, my, my, she said, 'I don't mind
'Cause maybe someday they're gonna love me back to life

The last two lines of the chorus change with every repetition, concisely chronicling the tortured loneliness of the song's adrift title character. Here, though, they take on a profound and empowering punch. Accompanied by drums, pounding in double-time, and led by Fallon's fiercest bellow, the song leaves a wreckage of doubt, confusion, and blood behind for the song's piercing outro. "My name is Rosemary, and you'd be lucky to meet me/My name is Rosemary, and you'd be lucky if you get to hold me," Fallon proclaims in the songs final moments. Regardless of what or who the song is about, those final lines send a universal message of freedom and hope. It's tough to picture a setlist going forward where "Rosemary" doesn't set the stage on fire.

Elsewhere, Fallon gets into his usual game of references and homage. Sonically, "A Wonderful Life" is his most Springsteen-indebted song in years; "Among Other Foolish Things" dismisses the Beatles' old mantra of "All You Need Is Love" as...well, foolish; the highway-ready "Long Drives" references "Always on My Mind" and "Into the Mystic," and has a knockout bridge about "a girl with a taste for the world and whiskey and Rites of Spring"; "Honey Magnolia" fits in nods to "Blowin' in the Wind," "It's a Man's Man's Man's World," and Bruce's "Racing in the Street" before sunsetting with one of the most gorgeous guitar solos ever; and "Open All Night" actually shares a title with a Springsteen song—though its hopeful, wistful vibe gets Fallon far enough away from the forsaken plains of Nebraska to safely quote a Don Henley song.

On first listen, Painkillers is deceptively simple and surface-level. It plays with so much immediacy that it feels like Fallon's "pop" record. After all, when was the last time he wrote songs as instantly catchy as "A Wonderful Life" or "Nobody Wins"? But the more time I've spent with this record, the more nuance and heart it has revealed to me. Fallon's albums have always been about the ups and downs of life, from the Ferris wheel youth of The '59 Sound to American Slang's maybe-we-ain't-that-young-anymore nostalgia, all the way to the post-divorce heartache of Get Hurt. Painkillers is no different, and as "Open All Night" reaches its final lines, it feels like Fallon is surveying his entire story from an older and wiser place. "And I will never know the town where you finally settled down/With the top back on the Cadillac and your sunglasses on/And you can't make me whole, I have to find that on my own/But I held you baby a long, long time ago/When we were open all night long."

That line, "I have to find it on my own," feels startlingly candid and pointed, given both the status of Painkillers as Fallon's first solo venture, and his recent comments about the uncertain future of The Gaslight Anthem. Even if there is no sixth Gaslight Anthem album, though, Fallon's story is far from finished. This guy is one of the best songwriters of his generation, in any genre, and if his future albums—solo or not—are as full of pleasures as Painkillers, we have nothing to worry about. "I don't want to survive," Brian sings in this album's stirring opening salvo. "I want a wonderful life." Suffice to say that, if Painkillers does signify the end of something, it's fitting that it does so with every ounce of Fallon's signature romanticized hope still intact.

Great expectations, indeed.

The Gaslight Anthem - Get Hurt

“Completely different than anything we had ever done before.”

That’s the description that Brian Fallon, frontman for New Jersey rock band The Gaslight Anthem, gave to Rolling Stone in regards to Get Hurt, the band’s fifth full-length studio album. In fact, in the lead up to this record, Fallon made numerous statements just like that, talking about how he and his band spent the writing and recording sessions for album number five listening to famous records where bands had changed course and gotten “weird.” For some, hearing Fallon reference U2’s Achtung Baby and how it took that band’s sound in a completely new direction, was reason to become uneasy. After all, The Gaslight Anthem is a band that has made a career out of following small progressions from album to album, changing up the themes, lyrics, and song structures, but always maintaining the same core Jersey rock and roll sound. The prospect of a “weird” Gaslight Anthem album was nerve-wracking because, for many, imagining what that album could even possibly sound like was borderline impossible.

For others though, the idea of Fallon and co. going in a completely new direction was an appealing one. 2012’s Handwritten, the band’s last record, doubled down on riffs, hooks, and shiny production, but for many, it lost the street-rat charm that made both The 59 Sound and American Slang welcoming and relatable. Those fans will be pleasantly surprised by the first moments of Get Hurt, where a sludgy wall of guitars breaks through the speakers with fuzz and fury. The opener, the booming and bustling “Stay Vicious,” is the grittiest this band has sounded in years, replacing the last record’s Oasis-sized arena rock with something more akin to the dirty nineties grunge of Pearl Jam and Nirvana—both bands that The Gaslight Anthem covered on their last tour.

For an intro and a verse, “Stay Vicious” is a welcoming entry point for fans who still hold Gaslight’s debut record, the loud and unpolished Sink or Swim, as the band’s gold standard. (The fact that the song is laced with Fallon’s grimmest lyricism in half a decade, with winning lines like “I have pills for this, tabs for that/And something that used to resemble a soul,” only furthers its “return-to-form” MO.) But then “Stay Vicious” breaks into its chorus, and everything changes. Rather than the roaring, vocal-cord-shredding hook that one might have expected from a Gaslight Anthem opener built in the vein of a straight-ahead Pearl Jam rocker, “Stay Vicious” opts instead to subvert expectations, dropping into a slow-burn, eye-of-the-storm refrain that has more in common with The National than it does with Nirvana. It’s a beautiful, rain-drenched moment, and it adds an intriguing dichotomy to a song that could have easily been a loud, generic throwaway. It also forces you to start paying attention: maybe this is what Fallon was talking about in all of those pre-release interviews.

Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on what kind of fan you are), “Stay Vicious” is the exception rather than the rule. While there are songs on Get Hurt that take The Gaslight Anthem’s sound in new directions, it turns out that Fallon didn’t go quite far enough in trying to write a career shift into his band’s narrative. In other words, after all of Fallon’s hype, Get Hurt feels strangely safe, even if it is a good deal more exploratory than Handwritten ever was. Even the songs that do different things, like the gorgeously melancholy title track, the Tom Waits-esque “Underneath the Ground,” or the shapeshifting “Selected Poems,” don’t feel shocking, since they are hitting many of the same sonic pressure points that Fallon built his Horrible Crowes project on three years ago.

That doesn’t mean they aren’t fantastic songs, though. On the contrary, the sweeping “Get Hurt” is one of the best things Fallon has ever written, with a heartwrenching bridge (“Maybe you needed a change, and maybe I was in the way,” he bellows in the final moments of the song, a simplistic line that hits like a wrecking ball thanks to the booming nature of the arrangement and to Fallon’s better-than-ever vocal delivery) and crystal clear studio work from producer Mike Crossey (Arctic Monkeys, The 1975) that make it the clear lynchpin of the record. “Selected Poems” is more traditional Gaslight fare, but don’t be surprised if the song’s intro, ripped straight from the middle of Elsie, lulls you into a false sense of security. Even if it’s safer than I would like it to be, Get Hurt still has a few surprises up its sleeve, and the swan dive into the main body of “Selected Poems” is the best one. “I was fortunately desperate and turbulently innocent,” Fallon shouts as the song kicks into high gear, moments before launching into the record’s most incendiary chorus: “And all I seem to find is that everything has chains/And all this life just feels like a series of dreams,” Fallon rages on the hook, referencing Pearl Jam’s “Corduroy” in the same way he used to reference Springsteen.

And that’s arguably the biggest departure evident on Get Hurt: for the first time, Fallon is cribbing almost no moves from the Boss. The 59 Sound was a veritable scavenger hunt for Springsteen references, and American Slang based many of its themes of fading youth on Born to Run. Even Handwritten, which started Fallon’s move away from loving homage, had its Bruce parallels, from the Spectorian “wall of sound” evident on “Here Comes My Man” to the crashed American Dream of “National Anthem.” Here, Fallon seems to be writing songs that make a purposeful effort to get away from the Springsteen comparisons. It’s not hard to see why he’s doing it—a few years ago, he wrote a disgruntled open letter about concertgoers who would request Bruce songs at Gaslight shows instead of his songs—but considering the many great places the Springsteen influence has taken Fallon over the years, it’s a shame that the frontman has evidently decided to retire it.

Replacing Springsteen here are Fallon’s other heroes: Vedder, Cobain, and Petty, chief among them. The latter crops up on the album’s most patent Gaslight tunes, like “1,000 Years,” a kicking heartland rock track that would have been right at home on American Slang. A definite album highlight, “1,000 Years” has one of the most instantly memorable chorus melodies Fallon has ever written. It’s a hook worthy of “summer jam” distinction, and it should have been the lead-off single. The other Petty number is “Break Your Heart,” which fills this album’s “acoustic ballad” slot. It’s a familiar and predictable track, a pleasant piece of dusky folk-pop that feels like a natural-born penultimate number.

Unfortunately, in context of the raucous and scatterbrained Get Hurt, “Break Your Heart” feels almost jarring, like an attempt to replicate the introspective conclusion to Handwritten, only without the same level of cohesion. It’s not the fault of Fallon’s songwriting that “Break Your Heart” fails, though some will undoubtedly accuse it of being too maudlin. Instead, the problem is the overall sequencing of the record. After the first three tracks, Get Hurt fires off a number of songs that feel more like one-off diversions than parts of an album experience. The eerie “Stray Paper,” with its female back-up vocals and a histrionic delivery from Fallon (not unlike “Too Much Blood,” the last album’s overwrought centerpiece) is particularly guilty of this offense, as is the torrid, lyrically clumsy “Helter Skeleton.” Neither track is bad, but both feel a bit misplaced coming after the infectious “1,000 Years” and the grandiose title track. Similarly, lead single “Rollin’ and Tumblin’” is a killer throwback to the band’s early days that just doesn’t fit here, while “Red Violins” is this album’s “Desire,” an enjoyable piece of filler that will undoubtedly be singled out as a representation of everything this album is lacking.

Reorganized into a different order (or even altered a bit to include one or two of the bonus tracks), Get Hurt might have felt like a more connected and well-paced project. As is, it’s a bizarre jumble of ideas from a band that has at very least always done a great job at following a complete arc through their albums. The last few songs make a valiant attempt to restore the mood set by record’s opening, with “Selected Poems” and “Ain’t That a Shame” returning to the same dark and confused vein of the first three songs. Album finale “Dark Places,” meanwhile, goes back to the well that provided “The Backseat”—the epic closer from The 59 Sound, and still the band’s best song—for a fitting send-off. Everything about the song, from the almost imperceptible vinyl scratch of the opening notes, to the defining line of the chorus (“How many nights did I crash against the waves without going under?”), recalls the youthful beachside atmosphere of The 59 Sound. In other words, it’s a thrilling time capsule number for early fans of the band, filled with crashing drums, throwback guitar tones, and a swelling atmosphere that legitimately feels like the salt of sea spray on a hot August night. Whether or not it makes sense as the closer for this particular album will be debated, but for a set of songs that goes all over the place while revisiting virtually every stage of Fallon’s career, tying everything neatly together was never going to be a viable option.

Ultimately, Get Hurt isn’t The Gaslight Anthem’s best album, nor is it the one that people are going to remember years for now for taking their career in a new direction. Instead, it’s almost like a “greatest hits, new songs” kind of deal, a record that will appease and frustrate fans in equal measure, depending on which era of the band’s history they appreciate the most. Sure, it’s disheartening that the album isn’t the game-changing record Fallon promised, and it’s too bad that it doesn’t have the thesis-statement cohesion of albums like The 59 Sound and American Slang. But the songs are still great, the production is still excellent, and the performances of the band members have rarely been in finer form. Here’s hoping that, since Get Hurt essentially sums up the first chapter of The Gaslight Anthem, album number six will be able to start the second chapter in uncharted territory.

"We wait for kingdom come with the radio on": The Gaslight Anthem Live in Detroit

The Gaslight Anthem
Live at St. Andrews Hall, Detroit, MI
September 14th, 2012

(Check this out over at AbsolutePunk.net as well)

Disclaimer: This is going to be long.

The last time I saw a show at Detroit’s St. Andrew’s Hall, it was 2006: I was 15 years old, lining up for my first real concert, and temperatures had been hovering around 100 degrees all day. Needless to say, the heatwave turned that small and cramped club into a sauna, and I left the building soaked in sweat, smelling worse than anyone has the right to, and dehydrated to a dire state. But the night was legendary: I saw Butch Walker, one of my first and foremost musical heroes, give a show full of raucous antics and emotional intensity that cut through the heat and straight to the core of me. I’ve been to a lot of shows since then, big and small, from stadiums and arenas to the smallest clubs in Michigan, but that first one still has a spark about it that takes me back: my brother’s best friend making a wrong turn and ending up in some shady back alley (in Detroit, this is not a good thing); some homeless guy named Papa Smurf (who later ended up in the pages of Sports Illustrated) trying to bum a few bucks; the opening acts, which included a pre-fame Boys Like Girls and an energetic southern-rock act called As Fast As; Butch’s back-up singers spraying the crowd with hoses; and yes, one of the best setlists and shows I’ve seen by the guy who plays club shows better than anyone.

Perhaps it’s appropriate that my first appointment with the Gaslight Anthem bore a lot of similarities to that show. Over the past few years, Brian Fallon has slowly wormed his way into the ranks of my favorite frontmen in rock ‘n’ roll, and Gaslight’s latest, Handwritten, is likely to take the top spot on my album of the year list. In the time I’ve been a fan, it’s also become a joke of sorts between my brother and I that Fallon was never going to come back to Michigan. We missed out on his visits in 2010, in support of the band’s third album American Slang, and he’s spent most of the intervening years touring Europe, both with Gaslight and side-project The Horrible Crowes. When dates finally started coming out for the Handwritten tour, we were further disappointed by the fact that the band would be supporting Rise Against (along with rockers Hot Water Music) rather than going it alone. The tour included a Grand Rapids date, a short drive for both of us, but the prospect of paying double or triple our usual ticket price to see Gaslight play 12 or 13 songs didn’t seem too appealing.

Then, finally, our prayers were answered. Rise Against was taking a night off on the Friday before that GR show, and Gaslight and Hot Water Music each decided to do one-off tour dates in Detroit. So it was that my brother and I ended up in St. Andrew’s Hall, a sold out crowd swelling around us, waiting for Fallon and company to take the stage. Doors opened at 8, and with the stage already bedecked in Gaslight regalia, it was fairly clear that there was no opening act tonight. No nonsense, straight-to-the-point: the way Springsteen does it and the way I like it.

It was 9 p.m. on the dot when the band took the stage. Opener “Boomboxes and Dictionaries,” the lead-off track from the 2007 debut Sink or Swim announced two things: first, that this was going to be a concert of deep cuts and old songs, meant for the die-hard fans, and second, that the St. Andrew’s Hall sound set-up was abysmal. Fallon’s vocals were far too low in the mix, to the point where anyone unfamiliar with the songs would have had a hell of a time figuring out what he was singing about. The blend was messy at best, sacrificing clarity for sheer volume, and as the show went on, Alex Rosamilia’s lead guitar lines seemed to get sharper and sharper. All of these problems were consistent ones, a shame because the band played one hell of a setlist. Still, the atmosphere was electric, with a crowd full of people who clearly loved this band and these songs as much as I did, and with sing/shout along sessions that rocked the very foundations of the place. While I went back and forth on whether or not the trade-off was an even one (more on that later), The Gaslight Anthem didn’t disappoint.

The best songs in the setlist, almost unanimously, were those culled from the band’s latest record. Call it whatever you like, but the band was clearly the most at home with their latter-day material, and songs like “Howl,” “45,” and “Handwritten” set a high-water mark very early on in the night. That’s not to say that their earlier work fell flat, though. Classics from their 2008 album, The ’59 Sound, formed the backbone of the set, and the inclusions of “Even Cowgirls Get The Blues,” “Meet Me By The River’s Edge,” “The Patient Ferris Wheel,” “Film Noir,” and “The ’59 Sound” all gave way to triumphant sing-alongs. Speaking of those, “Keepsake” was a set highlight, with a skyscraping chorus that rang through the venue like a battle cry, and “American Slang” scorched like the anthem it is, with its massive guitar riff and yet another fist pumping hook.

But the poor quality of the sound definitely took its toll on what was otherwise a nearly spotless performance. I’ve often thought that I would like the songs from Sink or Swim a lot more if they were recorded now. The fidelity of the original recordings makes them sound like demos, but the actual songs are masterful, with more punk edge than the ones from The ’59 Sound, but very obviously cut from the same nostalgic cloth. With five of the album’s 12 songs represented here (“Boomboxes,” “Wooderson,” “Angry Johnny and the Radio,” “1930,” and “We Came to Dance”), this should have been a perfect opportunity to see those songs reborn. Unfortunately, the fuzzy and muddy sound production lent them nothing new, and while they were still fun, welcome additions to the set (especially the last two, which the band pulled out as the show entered its final act), they did not end as highlights for me. Furthermore, I don’t know if Alex Rosamilia was having an off night in general or if he just couldn’t hear his own instrument (I wouldn’t blame him), but the guitar solos were off-the-mark and strangely ineffective for most of the concert. They ranged from too quiet (the riffs on songs like “Keepsake” and “Mulholland Drive,” moments that define those songs on record but were almost inconsequential here) to sloppy and out-of-tune (the sweeping transitions in “Mae,” which disappointed live after being one of my favorite songs they’ve ever written). It was a bizarre and unfortunate enigma for the band member who really makes Handwritten what it is, and I didn’t quite know how to take it.

But overall, the great moments far outweighed the disappointments. American Slang highlight “The Queen of Lower Chelsea” was a definite treat, slowing down the tempo for a subdued moment late in the main set. Handwritten b-side “Blue Dahlia,” with its rousing chorus and perfect bridge, got the live feature I never thought it would. And finally seeing “The Backseat” live, as the first curtain call, was as euphoric and emotionally visceral as I always knew it would be. There are moments from every live show I’ve been too that I will remember for the rest of my life: looking around me as the house lights went up during “Born to Run” at my first Springsteen show and seeing the ranks of the Palace of Auburn Hills rising around me, all of us screaming along at the top of our lungs; the opening guitar riff of “Where the Streets Have No Name” echoing through a flawless summer night at Spartan Stadium a week or two before the end of U2’s 360 tour; Butch Walker gesturing to my brother and I to help him down into the audience at one of the concerts where we had ended up front and center. Belting along with “The Backseat,” shouting about how “we rode the fever out of Austin” and “dreamed of California lights,” was absolutely up there, and I realized that, ultimately, my complaints about the sound and about how Rosamilia’s guitar didn’t sound quite as pitch-perfect as it does on record didn’t really matter at all. This show was all about the atmosphere: it was about the electricity of the crowd, about the gleeful performance from the band we all loved, and about the setlist that traveled to every corner of their discography. It was about rediscovering the power of rock ‘n’ roll, and I didn’t want that last song to end because I just wanted to keep on cherishing it.

Luckily, that wasn’t the last song. Not by a long shot.

After much racket from the crowd, The Gaslight Anthem re-took the stage and rocketed into a pair of ‘90s covers (Pearl Jam’s “State of Love and Trust” and Nirvana’s “Sliver”). While I don’t particularly care for either song, the band was visibly passionate about both and Brian especially looked like he was having a ball with them. “Biloxi Parish,” despite being considered by some as one of the weaker points of Handwritten was nothing short of potent and transcendent here, resulting in one of my favorite moments of the set. And “Blue Jeans and White T-Shirts” provided a note of emotional weight and solemnity to an encore that was otherwise about big, brash rock songs. It certainly doesn’t hurt that it’s one of the best and most enduring things that Fallon has written to date.

I’ve seen artists skimp on the encore a lot of times before. A year and a half ago, Iron & Wine’s Sam Beam brought my disappointment in his live show full-circle by doing a cop out, one-song encore that wasn’t “The Trapeze Swinger.” Ryan Adams took intimacy to a new height during his show at the Ann Arbor Folk Festival last winter, but left it feeling truncated and unfinished when he departed the stage after “Come Pick Me Up” and didn’t come back. The best shows are the ones with the artists who just keep going, the ones who come back for “one more song” three or four times and act like they never want to leave the stage. Bruce Springsteen is famous for this, and on Friday night, Brian Fallon and the guys in the Gaslight Anthem channeled that stamina in spades. The house lights didn’t go up after the band’s second departure, and even though many of my fellow audience members started moving towards the exits, I was holding onto hope that they still had a little more to give. Lo and behold, after copious amounts of shouting, screaming, clapping, and stomping, the boys were back onstage one more time, for that elusive second encore.

As I mentioned before, the band kicked off their final stand with a pair of Sink or Swim songs (“1930” and “We Came to Dance”), both of which crackled with the same energy and force that they had been channeling all night. “The Diamond Church Street Choir” took one of the evening’s few trips into American Slang territory (suffice to say that I could have done with a few more), and “Here’s Looking At You, Kid” functioned in much the same way as “Blue Jeans” had – as a gorgeous, sobering torch song. When the guitar riff for ’59 Sound opener “Great Expectations” echoed through the hall, there seemed to be an agreement of sorts between the band and the audience that this was the grand finale, and both parties acted accordingly. The crowd surged forward, transforming the venue’s floor into a riotous mosh pit. In situations like this, you have no choice but to give yourself over to the insanity of it all, to go with the ebb and flow of the crowd, hang on for dear life, and hope you don’t die. But one last explosive, sweaty, communal sing-along was just what the set needed to send it off, and even though I didn’t get my choice for a closer (the latest single “Here Comes My Man,” which was surprisingly absent from the set), you can’t complain too much with a song as good as “Expectations.”

At two hours and 29 songs, with a pair encores and more memorable moments than I can possibly expound upon here, Friday night’s gig was the longest show The Gaslight Anthem have played all year. It was longer than the Handwritten album release show or any of the concerts they played in Europe. It was certainly more sprawling than all of their supporting dates with Rise Against and Hot Water Music, past or future, or any of the slots they played on the festival circuit. It was also a textbook example of the age-old rock ‘n’ roll show agreement between a performer and their audience: the band gave fans an epic marathon show that covered deep cuts and greatest hits alike, and in turn, we gave them a chance to let loose, have fun, and own the room like the rock stars they deserve to be. Five years into their career, The Gaslight Anthem are already building a legacy of great songs, better albums, and evocative classic rock traditions, and their live shows follow suit with all of that. Had the sound in St. Andrew’s Hall be a bit better, I might have been ready to proclaim this concert as one of the greatest I had ever seen; even with that, though, it’s still pretty damn close, and that’s worth an awful lot.

Setlist

1. Boomboxes and Dictionaries
2. American Slang
3. Howl
4. Even Cowgirls Get The Blues
5. 45
6. Handwritten
7. Wherefore Art Thou, Elvis?
8. Wooderson
9. Meet Me By The River's Edge
10. Keep Sake
11. Angry Johnny and the Radio (with Brand New - Jesus Christ tag)
12. The Patient Ferris Wheel
13. The '59 Sound
14. Film Noir
15. Senor and the Queen
16. Blue Dahlia
17. The Queen of Lower Chelsea
18. Mulholland Drive
19. Mae
20. The Backseat

Encore

21. State of Love and Trust (Pearl Jam cover)
22. Silver (Nirvana Cover)
23. Biloxi Parish
24. Blue Jeans and White T-Shirts

Second Encore

25. 1930
26. We Came to Dance
27. The Diamond Church Street Choir
28. Here's Looking At You, Kid
29. Great Expectations