"The 59 Sound" - The Gaslight Anthem, Review

• Artist: The Gaslight Anthem
• Album Title: The '59 Sound
• Record Label: Side One Dummy
• Release Date: 8/25/2008
• Rating: 9.0
• Bands Web Site: http://www.gaslightanthem.com/
• Sound: Punk Rock, Garage Rock, Pop
• Similar Artists: Against Me!, Dropkick Murphys, The Replacements, Bruce Springsteen

Drunkenly walking home across the Pulaski Bridge to Brooklyn one night last week, "Great Expectations" from the Gaslight Anthem's new album The '59 Sound came on my iPod and I was swept up in the band's wickedly sweet sound: a mix of punk energy with New Jersey, blue-jeans-and-bars classic rock. Perfect for an inebriated streetlamp lit walk back home. Along with lead singer Brian Fallon I belted out the chorus 'I saw daylights/Last night/and I dreamed about my first wife/Everybody leaves and I'd expect the same from you', no doubt startling a couple of my fellow late-night pedestrians, but I couldn't help it - I felt like the song was about me. Music is always better when it feels personal; with that in mind, I may be swept up in the honeymoon stage of love with The '59 Sound, so take my enthusiasm with a grain of salt(but just a grain, the band is really good).

The best songs from the tight, 12 song affair are energizing; full of head-bobbing riffs and dramatic melodies. It's a sweaty bar-basement show where you shout out the choruses2 as the band rips through their set. Fallon's soulful, often heartbreaking vocals sets the band apart from their peers(imagine the Hold Steady fronted by a 1980s Paul Westerberg). Fallon's lyrics drip with earnest('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' from "High Lonesome") and tell a unique story you can still relate to. I may have never been a Jersey boy wishing he was Johnny Cash or Elvis, but everyone has wished they were someone else at some point.

When a band has a winning formula, there is a danger of all the songs sounding the same. Luckily, Gaslight Anthem avoids that(like on a great AC/DC album) - you'll never find yourself thinking 'this song rocks, but which one is it?'(like on a good AC/DC album)3. In fact, there are so many good songs I had a hard time deciding which ones in particular to write about; '59 Sound could be a greatest hits album all by itself. Next Saturday night, download this album, grab a beer, a buddy, and enjoy.

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1This is the sound I think Brandon Flowers was going for, and largely failed to get, on Sam's Town. Guess you need a band from Jersey to channel the Boss.

2You will be singing: 'Don't wait too long to come home/My have the years of our youth passed on/Don't wait too long to come home/I'll leave the front light on' from "Miles Davis & The Cool" and 'Can I get a witness pretty baby/I still love Tom Petty songs/And driving old men crazy' from "Even Cowgirls Get The Blues".

3Yes, these are the only two kinds of AC/DC albums.

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Buy from eMusic, iTunes.

A Reoccuring Dream

A Reoccurring Dream: I'm a little boy, at the age when first memories begin to form...the youngest I ever was. Not yet fully aware of myself. I'm sitting in front of a television. A commercial comes on - for what, it doesn't matter - starring another little boy. He's blonde. He's handsome. I know because my babysitter says so.

A little boy thought: I'm blonde! So I am handsome!

I run to the bathroom to look at myself. I see the boy in the mirror.

A little boy thought: I don't look like the boy on TV...

...I must not be handsome.

My first memory; my first disappointment.

There is an element of this dream in every day that's happened since.

Temporarily Blind

I'm hideously vain, it seems. Or maybe just a little. You decide:

My ten year high school reunion is this weekend, and for reasons I can't really explain, I'm very excited. Part of it is, after a month or so in New York, this will be my first trip home and I will get to see my family, friends, etc. And I'll get to drink with some of them. The other part is, like most nerds, I want to show everyone I went to high school with how much I've changes. There, I said it. I can explain it, it's just embarrassing.

One very noticeable change is I no longer wear glasses. In high school, I not only wore glasses, I wore huge, thick glasses. The kind that Buddy Holly would refuse to wear because they were too geeky(this was true of every year except my senior year, I think, when I adopted more sensible frames). So I'm excited to show up sans-two of my four eyes. Then, yesterday, disaster struck.

I'm down to my last pair of lenses before I need to order new ones. I thought, for some reason, they would last until the reunion. Having just moved, I hadn't found a new optometrist and my vision insurance card hadn't -- and still hasn't -- arrived in the mail. A long-winded way to excuse myself for not having a back-up pair of lenses. So yesterday, my left lens develops a tear, and promptly disintegrates in my hands.

Oh-fucking-no...what am I going to do? I thought. I am NOT wearing glasses to this thing...think...think...eye exam? lenses? in two days??

The thought of going to that reunion wearing glasses flat-lined my excitement. I don't want people to see me as I was; I want them to see me as I am now!

Sure, my hair is a lot longer, scraggly, I'm not as helplessly skinny, and I'm not as socially inept as I was -- but goddammit -- I don't wear glasses anymore! That's the important thing that everyone should see.

Everyone being an entity that has yet to be defined. I have no idea who will come, who I will remember and who will remember me. It could all be an empty exercise, like doing squats while eating a Big Mac.

So, I had an eye exam this morning, and luckily -- despite astigmatism in my right eye -- they had a pair of lenses in stock I could wear while waiting for my prescription to come in. Disaster averted.

Someone better notice. I'll try and post some pictures of the hopefully splendid event.

After A Week, That's What My Resolve Is

I gave in; I succumbed; I wilted to impulse - but I don't feel guilty. Sounds Eclectic is mine.

Am I a soulless yuppie now? Does buying one CD from Starbucks tag me as such?

Sigh. Why worry about labels -- yuppie, hipster, blondie, neo-nazi looking motherfucker -- that follow you around. Some things you have to accept about yourself. I accept that I am willing to buy overpriced CDs at Starbucks, helping a faceless corporation keep the material exclusive while allowing myself to feel a little better because public radio benefits from my purchase. I know it does; a little yellow sticker on the cover brightly told me so.

I could use a drink; I can't remember the last time I had some alcohol. That's a good thing, really, in the same sense that going to church every Sunday -- even if you don't believe in God -- is a good thing. I'm not abstaining because of health, morals, or addiction. It's just habit now. I need some social spirits. Part of it is my girlfriend doesn't drink. Like Jules said, "My girlfriend's a vegetarian, which pretty much makes me a vegetarian." But I do enjoy a good drink.

We'll see what the future holds.