This review is part of a series looking back at significant albums on their anniversaries. Through the benefit of hindsight we will be viewing the album not just as it was released, but how it stands the test of time, as well as its place in the band’s discography and the genre in general.
SideOneDummy Records – 19 August 2008
Looking back on the time we took a seat down at the bar with the other broken heroes
For 15 years, I’ve seen comparisons drawn between The Gaslight Anthem and Bruce Springsteen, between Gaslight and Social Distortion and of course, between The Gaslight Anthem and The Clash. All are valid, the album from the modern Jersey Boys is a blue-collar blitz of nostalgia, odes to classic cars, community and the constant grasp for dreams just out of reach. Like Joe Strummer, Mike Ness or Bruuuuuce, Gaslight Anthem frontman Brian Fallon keeps his eyes on the brass ring even when his legs have been cut out from beneath. We can go back and forth about whether the band is punk or rock, but there’s no denying they are fucking talented and changed the game when they released The ‘59 Sound in 2008. The moment we heard the crackle of a needle dropping on a turntable, it was clear we were getting a new classic, a fresh take on some old soul.
For an album that is known for its nostalgia, The ‘59 Sound is one of the few in my life that has grown with me. Unlike so many of my favorite records, the albums that were everything for that year or that moment in life, Gaslight Anthem wrote a record that changed its meaning with every moment of my life. Every song turned out to be relatable to every milestone, goal, stumble and dream since. Plenty of bands have grown with me over the course of their catalog, but to have a record like this that matures as I do, it’s something special.
Its a record anyone can enjoy, a point brought back to the forefront recently for me. In a single day, I found myself in three separate and spontaneous conversations about the band with an 18-year-old swimmer on my daughter’s swim team, a 10-year-old boy and his 40 year-old mother who had seen the band together earlier in the month and a 50-something cop all of whom with different musical tastes, different politics and different Jersey upbringings. The only common factor between the five of us is the music and the record’s Garden Statements. We were brought together by the music, our tie that binds resting solely on Fallon’s pen.
Follow up efforts from the band never quite lived up to The ‘59 Sound but, if we’re really being honest, the thing about fresh takes is that they aren’t often duplicated without feeling a bit stale. TGA put out more great records, but this was their masterclass in modernizing the classic sound of their influences. A thesis in those who came before, made for those who come after.
It doesn’t much matter if you consider The Gaslight Anthem to be punk, rock or Americana, nobody gives a shit how you categorize the record because everyone knows the best way to categorize this record is to simply call it essential. Essential to every music fan looking for a new New Jersey, essential to our collections, essential to tramps like us born to run headlong into albums brimming with raucous melodies, nostalgic poetry and wistful laments about calloused hands and rock and roll dreams.
Bad Dad (occasionally called Ed) has been on the periphery of the punk and punk-adjacent scene for over twenty years. While many contributors to this site have musical experience and talent, Ed’s musical claim to fame comes from his time in arguably the most punk rock Blockbuster Video district in NJ where he worked alongside members of Blanks 77, Best Hit TV and Brian Fallon. He is more than just an awful father to his 2 daughters, he is also a dreadful husband, a subpar writer, a terrible dresser and has a severe deficiency in all things talent… but hey, at least he’s self-aware, amirite?
Check out the pathetic attempts at photography on his insta at https://www.instagram.com/bad_dad_photography/
