Elsie – The Horrible Crowes (Shock)

Deriving their name from the protagonists in a particularly nasty 12^th Century Scottish poem, The Horrible Crowes is the side-project for The Gaslight Anthem’s Brian Fallon, teaming with his guitar tech, Ian Perkins.

While Fallon is one of the more authentic voices in new American rock, owing his styling to equal parts Springsteen and The Clash, on this album he narrows his focus and substitutes the panoramic sweep and urgency of the Gaslights, for a more claustrophobic mood. While the result isn’t a million miles away from his main band (especially on the buoyant Beyond The Hurricane and the strident Go Tell Everybody), the largely low-key approach creates a menacing atmosphere that serves as a platform to tell the stories of some emotionally wounded characters.

The album opens with Last Rites, a sinister, dark, stark song that finds Fallon brooding over harsh piano chords. The album begins to open out from there with the familiar incessant, soulful brooding of Sugar, which rides a gentle wave to the foot of Beyond The Hurricane.

Fallon has always appeared to be wrestling between his heartland rocker side and his urban soul side and this album provides a valuable outlet for his more subdued styling.  When he whispers the vocal of I Witnessed A Crime over a faux reggae rhythm it’s clear that there are still more strings to his bow.

There’s songs on the album that do sound like they could be sketches for the next Gaslight Anthem opus, rather than completed works in their own right, but on the whole Elsie adds another respectable layer to the catalogue of a believable artist whole dares to defiantly champion the on-going importance of rock n’ roll as a relevant contemporary artform.

 

American Slang – The Gaslight Anthem (Shock)

Along with The Hold Steady, The Gaslight Anthem have been anointed as the saviours of guitar based rock music (is there any other kind?) and on the evidence of their latest album American Slang they are taking the job seriously.

They don’t take themselves as seriously as some of the music writers who have been tripping over their superlatives and mixing metaphors to try and suggest that these is not just a rock n’ roll band but a cure for all the worlds evils. One recent local magazine cover story qualified as the most spuriously self-conscious music writing I’ve had the misfortune to be subjected to in recent times. But the existence of such nonsense is usually an example of smoke coming from where fire is lit.

On this their third album The Gaslight Anthem have well and truly fanned the flames of what they ignited on The 59 Sound and moved a little further from their punk roots.

The actual sound of the album is superior. There’s a resonance in the bottom end and a cut-through on the guitars that gives the album more dynamic diversity than they have had in the past. Lyrically they seem to have transcended a navel gazing examination of struggletown and Brian Fallon is taking a more broad based view of the world. He’s still a hopeless prisoner of rock n’ roll but he does seem to be aware that the world is now watching and that his little problems are not enough to sustain everyone’s interest. He’s taking a smarter and more travelled world view and while the references, place names and people are still local their travails are more universal. You get the sense that he’s aware of what his band might be able to be.

The location of the Old Haunts could be in just about any scene, anywhere and the protagonists in We Did It When We Were Young could be fighting their personal wars on the streets of your town, wherever it might be.

The Gaslight Anthem don’t muck around. The albums ten songs clock in under 35 minutes and they have certainly resisted the temptation to deliver a magnum opus. The album is taut and terrific and on songs like the title track, Stay Lucky, Boxer and Orphans they deliver the high energy, urgent rock n’ roll music in spades.

They have been compared to a lot of great rock artists, most prominently another high profile New Jersey icon, but to me they have more in common with some of the lesser known indie rock bands of the eighties and nineties like Smithereens and Wire Train. Neither band went on to make history (as such), but I have to admit there’s a greater depth of really good songs on this album than either of those bands ever achieved.

While The Gaslight Anthem are “just a rock n’ roll band”, they are a really, really good one and it’s possible, just possible, that twenty years from now some writer will be gushing about a new band saying “they embody the spirit and sound of The Gaslight Anthem”. For now they are still living in moment but they have one eye cocked at immortality. Continue to watch them with interest.