The Gaslight Anthem, American Slang
[SideOneDummy]
Reviewed by: Chris Bosman
It’s almost impossible to talk about the Gaslight Anthem’s last record, 2007’s excellent The ‘59 Sound, without mentioning Bruce Springsteen. A band from Jersey, alternately spinning intricate tales of blue-collar woe and frankly dealing with heavy, dark subject matter? They were practically made to peek out from Springsteen’s shadow. Their performance with the Boss at last year’s Lollapalooza only made the comparisons more inevitable and pushed expectations for the Gaslight Anthem’s follow-up higher. There’s a couple things that a band can do when they’re painted into such a corner. They can embrace what’s been ordained as their niche, or they can go in a completely different direction. On their latest album, American Slang, the Gaslight Anthem have tried to split the difference, to mixed results.
There are songs on American Slang that call back to the frenetic, undeniably New Jersey-style tracks on The ‘59 Sound. The opening trio of “Stay Lucky”, “Bring It On”, and “American Slang” all cull from familiar emotional places and employ a conversant melodic style. The band both opens with and names the album after its best– and most classically Gaslight Anthem– song. “American Slang” explodes out of the gate with one of the group’s most instantly memorable guitar licks and the strongest chorus on the album. Later, “The Spirit of Jazz” runs through high-octane guitar noodling and stomps through a chorus on par with anything the band has done to date. Most of the album, however, attempts to move the band in new directions. The problem manifests when none of these new directions mesh with each other, and when they seem to ignore the band’s strengths in favor of aimless new genre influences.
Finger snaps and a reggae-style guitar rhythm open “The Diamond Church Street Choir,” which sounds more interesting on paper than it actually comes off. The bog standard rock drumming, bar band backing vocals, and free-styling guitar that accompany on “Street Choir” don’t really mesh, and the whole thing comes off half-cocked. The chorus struggles to reclaim the band’s penchant classic rock anthemics, but without an epic lead-up, it falls flat, a distressingly common problem across American Slang.
Other strange and vaguely nonsensical experiments show up over the album. “The Queen of Lower Chelsea” employs a ska guitar riff in its intro and bursts inexplicably into noise during its short bridge, neither of which seem to make sense. Then, “We Did It When We Were Young” owns up to its Killers-esque title with its enormous, melodramatic closing. The worst offender is “Boxer”, which attempts punk rock energy but sounds a lot like a pop-punk song in the style of– gulp– Sum 41. Not all of the experiments fail, thankfully. “Old Haunts” would have been a hit in the grunge era, and the rustic stomp of penultimate track “She Loves You” will be the perfect all-together-now closing number for hundreds of Gaslight Anthem shows to come. And those experiments– “Boxer” aside– don’t fail completely. These are still well constructed rock and roll songs that fair well on repeated lessons.
What’s confusing about the band’s experiments, though, is how little the Gaslight Anthem seems to know their own strengths. On The ‘59 Sound, the band was at their best when they were full of piss and vinegar, energy and ballast, even when they were encountering mortality and morality. When the band finds that, like on the chugging insistence of “Orphan”, the classic rock pose that the band is trying on works. But when “We Did It When We Were Young” takes all of the band’s energy away in favor of a grandiose build-up, not even Brian Fallon’s wailing can engage the listener.
It’s at the end of American Slang that the album’s problems are most noticeable. For the album’s final song, the Gaslight Anthem reprise their title track. Leaving Fallon’s caterwaul intact, the rest of the song is reduced to a slow, plodding acoustic guitar track. Where the original version of “American Slang” was triumphant in the face of its defeatist subject matter, the closer is just defeated.
Rating: 62%