The Gaslight Anthem have recorded a new album, Handwritten, and the world is a better place for it. There will, of course, be the inevitable presence of joyless haters who complain that it's all stuff we've heard before, but as usual, those critics miss the point completely. If you're looking for sonic exploration and progressive tendencies, look elsewhere. The Gaslight Anthem are unabashed rock classicists, and each song they write is a love letter to rock and roll history with the chord structures firmly in the I-IV-V territory. They build albums out of the elements that have been proven to be effective and then reconfigure them, adding new emphasis and charm to tell their own stories. They're obviously good at what they do, because they can evoke a sense of wistful nostalgia with a song you've never heard before.
On Handwritten, the small changes to their sound add up. There is some great lead guitar work to be found, especially the solos on songs like "Mulholland Drive" and "Biloxi Parish," which also contains some of the sweetest romantic lines that Brian Fallon has written yet. The vocal harmonies are more intricate as well, and no longer comprised solely of punk rock "whoa's." The Springsteen adoration has been scaled back, so while you can still hear The Boss in their sound, there's more room now for other influences and the band's own voice to come through. Fallon appears to have brought a few things back from his work on The Horrible Crowes debut, namely a bolstered sense of melody and a vocal style that keeps getting more and more expressive. He first broke out of his older vocal style with "Diamond St. Church Choir" on American Slang, and he's just kept improving since then.
If you already know The Gaslight Anthem, you mostly know what to expect as far as lyrical content. The writing gets more nuanced with each album, but Fallon is telling his usual stories of loves both gained and lost, lives spent working in dismal jobs, and waiting for the radio to deliver that rock and roll salvation into the wild American night. Since Gaslight spends so much time looking at the past, it's fitting that the lyrics are carefully kept just vague enough that they could have been written in any decade in the past sixty years. There is a certain timeless quality that their albums possess, and Handwritten is a perfect example of that. Exploring the possibilities of sound is great, but sometimes you need a band to reliably deliver some straightforward, memorable rock and roll songs, and for that, The Gaslight Anthem should be at the top of your list.
Handwritten will be out July 24th, but you can stream a preview listen HERE.
