One of my favorite sounds of summer returns with a new release. The Gaslight Anthem evokes everything great about Jersey rock. You can listen to NPR's stream of the new release American Slang here http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=127405836.
This is a great band that you just love more and more each listen. and for those of us who really enjoy rock history, they recall characters and lines from great songs by springsteen and counting crows. I'm sure the new album will add to the storytelling.
Below i pasted an article from NPR last summer about Gaslight that really captures their spirit. Enjoy!
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=105778626
June 23, 2009 - Nearly a year after its release, The Gaslight Anthem's The '59 Sound is still winning converts one at a time: Released with little fanfare, it took off at a pace that seems glacial amid so many instant phenomena. Often compared to Born to Run-era Bruce Springsteen — or maybe Jimmy Eat World performing Replacements songs — the New Jersey band sounds best on car radios during long drives, when gutty rock 'n' roll benefits most from an air of life-and-death profundity.
There's no shortage of life, death or profundity in "The '59 Sound," a mile-wide, top-down, hook-laden beast of a summer anthem. But as swollen and adrenaline-infused as it is, it's really a song about the last music each of us gets to hear in our lives — and, by extension, what it means to die young without having to "hear the rattling chains in the hospital walls."
It's that air of tragedy that makes "The '59 Sound" seem like more than a simple rock barn-burner: When Brian Fallon sings, "Ain't supposed to die on a Saturday night," he captures the way a summer night behind the wheel can positively burst with youthful abandon, ever-present danger and fragile promise. With almost overpowering intensity, the song does exactly the same.
