The Gaslight Anthem - American Slang (15/6/2010)

Everyone and their grandmother knows that The Gaslight Anthem’s singer, Brian Fallon, has a love for The Boss. Fallon rewrites The Boss’s lyrics to make them his own, shamelessly, and pulls it off pretty well. When 2008’s ‘The 59 Sound’ came out, I knew I was going to like GLA when I heard Fallon sing ‘and at night i wake up with the sheets soaking wet/that’s a pretty good song, baby, you know the rest.’ Tack on the guest appearance of none other than Dicky Barrett (Mighty Mighty Bosstones) for some woo-oo-oh’s in ‘The Patient Ferris Wheel’ and you knew the album was going to be great.

And now in the spring of 2010, GLA deliver 10 new cuts collectively known as ‘American Slang.’ In essence, the album is chock full of catchy guitars without too much overdrive, good control over dynamics in not only each individual song but also as an album as a whole, and lyrics that are borderline emo by incorporating vague imagery and inane song titles, but are delivered with an honest conviction that Fallon receives a passing grade none the less. But what’s new? Nothing.

There’s no ‘new direction’ to talk about. There’s no opportunity to discuss ‘the production’ because we exhausted that subject on the forerunner, and because Fallon is still sprinkling his lyrics with references to The Boss (and others), there’s nothing new there, either. But one of the greatest things about rock n’ roll is that ‘the same’ is sometimes all you need. I spent two years listening to ‘The 59 Sound’ on a daily basis, and while I didn’t consider GLA to be a favorite of mine, that album certainly was. It was only recently that I felt that I had listened to the album to death and could get very little out of it any more. Luckily, this particular moment in time happened to be around the same time that GLA released ‘American Slang.’

As you might have noticed, I have spent very little time discussing ‘American Slang.’ Instead, I have only used words to compare this release to its last one. Take that to mean what you want it to mean. I’m pleased with it because I have a new album that I’m pretty sure I’ll fall in love with, even if it is filled with the same old stories I’ve heard before.