Brian Fallon of The Gaslight Anthem stopped by KEXP studios last week to record acoustic versions of three songs from the band’s newest album American Slang (out June 15th on SideOneDummy Records). The new songs keep speaking to the same themes from 2008′s The ’59 Sound – the grit and callousness of everyday life, the redemption through the songs (the ones we heard as our guard came down).
That second song is a cover of something originally by Canadian band Lightning Dust, a cousin band to Black Mountain. Originally woven in Amber Webber’s delicate croon on 2009′s Infinite Light (Jagjaguwar), Fallon reinvents it here as his own sad dirge of Americana. When I met him last year, Fallon told me he was thinking of recording a solo album. Since I love these acoustic sets, I’d be very interested in hearing that effort. Antonia Jane – Lightning Dust
Did you ever come close to home?
riding the tide of the silver line
maybe dress them up in ribbon and bows
never fall back into the one you love
This weekend is one of my personal favorites of the year, as I review back over a year of good shows, albums, and moments in music to start work on my year-end lists for 2009. I’m prepping to record my World Cafe conversation for NPR on Tuesday morning (it’ll air January 1st), which is always a process of squeezing 12 months of marvelous aural music wonder into about twenty minutes of talking. It’s never easy, but always fun, and always a privilege.
So I was sitting here watching some of the videos of shows I’ve seen this year when I realized that my very favorite concert video of the year was something I never posted. The current 300-something views of this video on YouTube may be mostly due to me since I feel like I’ve watched it many dozens of times and still am not tired of it.
It’s a video I shot of The Gaslight Anthem from the second night of their Colorado run in April. They sold out the Gothic Theatre with almost a thousand passionate fans who sang along with their whole hearts, and that night they played “I Coulda Been A Contender” (from their 2007 album Sink or Swim) for the first time yet on that tour.
Not only is this a terrific song that captures an innocence from some other time, but it also just plain rocks live. The video has a couple of those spots of regrettably fuzzy audio (my camera doth protest too much) but captures a tightly wound, spot-on, passionate performance of a great song. The band leapt and twisted themselves around their instruments, smiling with eyes closed on the very best lyrics, while the crowd roiled and yelled along. It captures both the joy and yearning of this band.
Make sure to watch to the very end.
I Coulda Been A Contender – Gaslight Anthem
I’m broke and I’m hungry, hard up and I’m lonely
I’ve been dancing on this killing floor for years
and of the few things I am certain
I’m the captain of my burden
I’m sorry doll, I could never stop the rain.
Once you said I was your hero
you would dance with me on a dime
we could spin this world right right right round
and catch back up on the flipside
I was gonna get this real big engine
I was gonna get them Broadway stars
you were gonna be my Judy Garland
we were gonna share your Tin Man heart.
There’s a dirty wind blowing
there’s a storm front coming in
there’s an SOS on the seas tonight
steady now steady now
soldier hold fast now
it’s heads or tails on heart attacks and broken dreams tonight…
Tomorrow night and Friday, I am anticipating two rather blissful nights with The Gaslight Anthem. Thursday surprisingly brings them to the Black Sheep in my neck of the woods, and the chance to see this raging powderkeg of a band play in a little cinderblock club out on the strip by the pawn shops. It’s $12, and I have a feeling this will be the last time you can see them in such an intimate venue — they are rumored to be the openers on Green Day‘s upcoming megatour. Friday brings them up the highway to Denver’s Gothic Theatre and I plan to be there as well. Notable openers are the Heartless Bastards.
The music of the Gaslight Anthem carries the urgency of youth mixed with the weight of decades past. On The ’59 Sound (one of my favorite albums of last year), sometimes it is hard to tell which generation they actually belong to. I have been enjoying this iTunes-only bonus track from the album specifically because it feels like it’s a story that’s coming to me from a long way off.
GASLIGHT ANTHEM – HEADLINING U.S./CANADA DATES Mar 18 La Tulipe – Montreal, Quebec % Mar 20 The Opera House – Toronto, Ontario % Mar 21 Call The Office – London, Ontario % Mar 27 Webster Hall – New York, NY Mar 28 The Trocadero – Philadelphia, PA # Mar 29 Mr. Small’s – Pittsburgh, PA # Apr 2 Turner Hall – Milwaukee, WI # Apr 3 The Bottom Lounge – Chicago, IL # Apr 4 Varsity Theater – Minneapolis, MN # Apr 7 The Warehouse – Calgary, Alberta # Apr 8 The Starlite Room – Edmonton, Alberta # Apr 10 The Plaza – Vancouver, British Columbia # Apr 15 The Boardwalk – Orangevale, CA # Apr 16 Slim’s – San Francisco, CA # Apr 21 The Clubhouse – Tempe, AZ # Apr 24 Gothic Theatre – Englewood, CO #
Another year packed with music has come and gone. Music is a language I can’t create myself but it does me good to know that every hour someone out there is humming a snippet of a melody, returning to their seat at the bar with a head full of lyrics that just occurred to them, or tapping out a drumbeat on their leg in the car. People everywhere are trying to get it right, to get the music out just so they can be. I am glad that they do.
2008 was full of fantastic (and varied) music from all corners of the world for me. I sometimes feel overwhelmed with the quantity of music and the subjectivity that swirls around the ones that make it vs. the ones that no one ever hears. I wish I’d had more hours to listen to (and properly digest) more songs this year. As it is, these are ten albums (plus two EPs plus one carryover from last year) that affected me on a gut level in the past twelve months. These are the ones I listened to over and over, that knocked the wind out of me and made me glad I have ears.
These aren’t “the best.” These are just my favorites.
FUEL/FRIENDS FAVORITES OF 2008
Lucky Nada Surf(Barsuk) I’ve been surprised by the intensity with which I’ve listened to this album in 2008. I guess it’s tapping into the introspective moments of my year as it pertains to “grown-up life,” which Caws sings is like “eating speed or flying a plane — it’s too bright.” The album cover hints perfectly at the feel of the music; the moment where it’s still warm from the sun but the gorgeous pinpricks of light are starting to shine through. I talked today about the cascades of glory on this album, a blazing meteor from this band that’s been around so long. I saw Matthew Caws perform solo last night and he said, “We feel blessed to have a second story,” (post-mid-Nineties buzz band). “It’s the story we always wanted anyways.” I’ve listened to this album a hundred times this year and it still affects me deeply, makes it okay to be fragile — and to be on a vector up. [original review, interview]
Midnight Organ Fight Frightened Rabbit(Fat Cat) Coming from Scotland with their hearts held out for the offering, these two brothers plus two bandmates have crafted an album that is not for the fainthearted, but excellent for the honest. Over gorgeous melodies and with a thick and wrenching Scottish brogue, Frightened Rabbit guttingly dissect the moments of bravery and moments of weakness that go with a relationship ending. Peter Katis (The National) produced this lilting, rocking piece of perfection — unflinching in its intimacy. [original review, interview]
For Emma Forever Ago Bon Iver (Jagjaguwar) I didn’t know when I started 2008 just how much I would need this album. Justin Vernon recorded this achingly vulnerable album in the Wisconsin woods in the dead of cold winter as he recovered from a breakup. The name he adopted means “good winter” in French, and I think the name fits the music as well as that ice-encrusted window on the cover. In winter, things move a little slower, but with more crisply defined edges, and the first time I heard this something was scraped loose inside of me. His music is wrapped in a thin skin but a current thrums powerfully under the surface. This is an album that I am unable to shake. [watch: still one of the most perfect things I’ve seen this year]
Stay Positive The Hold Steady (Vagrant) I think the thing that gets me with the Hold Steady, this year or any past year when they’ve released an album, is that they are unabashed in their belief in rock and roll. Craig Finn is a modern day prophet who flails and explodes with the force of the catharsis of these fantastic sounding songs that they must get out. The lyrics trace some of the most intelligent, evocative stories you’ll hear with characters I feel I know by now (they might as well be breathing). This is an immense album, with the pounding piano that crashes across the songs and the brass instruments slicing through. Gorgeously grand and subversively hopeful. [original review]
The ’59 Sound The Gaslight Anthem (Side One Dummy) If the Hold Steady filter their love for Springsteen through a lens of kids raised on punk and The Replacements, Jersey’s Gaslight Anthem play with an urgency and passion of a pre-Born to Run Bruce, young and hungry. Lead singer Brian Fallon grew up in a home four blocks from E Street, and this band is crafting songs that hold up as well when howled out ragged as they do stripped down to their bare acoustic bones. There’s a wisdom and sometimes a resignation beyond their years.
Ode To Sunshine Delta Spirit (Rounder) Delta Spirit was formed in San Diego when lead singer Matt Vasquez was busking loudly by the train tracks and he met with Brandon Young at two in the morning. The honesty and sloppiness that bleeds through at 2am is captured well on this authentic album with a vintage feel. It basks in the warmth of the surf guitars, the singalongs and handclaps and banging on trashcan lids, the tinkly last-call piano over glasses clattering. [original review]
Dual Hawks Centro-Matic/South San Gabriel (Misra) The cinematic desert beauty and chugging fuzz-rock found side-by-side on this dual album swooped in late in the year to win me over. I saw an acoustic video of Will Johnson, who helms both bands, performing “I, The Kite,” from an album I’d passed over too quickly the first time around. Both bands are Will’s and explore different dimensions of his music — Centro-matic electric like the heat in the air even as the Texas August sun has just begun to rise, whereas the more muted, spacious South San Gabriel has tones of evening and fireflies. This album was written and recorded fast and pure in a handful of days in the studio, and has a feeling of distilled essentials.
Oh! Mighty Engine Neil Halstead (Brushfire Records) Taking six long years from his last solo release Sleeping On Roads, influential British musician Neil Halstead (Slowdive) comes quietly back with a humble album of acoustic folk melodies that rewards the listener for their patience. This is a slow grower for me, and I find that more hues in the songs are revealed to me the longer I sit with it — a task I am eminently willing to take on. Halstead sings about trying to get the colors right, and with these unassuming tunes I think he does.
The Great Collapse Everything Absent or Distorted(self-released) This Denver collective does things full tilt. They play with seemingly all the instruments they can find, in order to squeeze the earnest beauty out of every melody and every rhythm. They fearlessly meld incisive lyrics with a resilient hope, like on “Aquariums”: “We are aquariums — left outside, but we hold life and a bright light in our glass walls.” With eight official members (and up to 15 on stage) EAOD is a joy to watch, and that joy transmits onto this smart album of sweeping scope. Amidst banjos and casio keyboards, trumpets and pots and pans, this band is ready for a larger stage. Literally. [original review]
Little Joy Little Joy (Rough Trade) It’s as simple as this: Little Joy just makes me happy. Their thirty-minute debut album is short and occasionally rough, it’s kitschy and danceable with Brazilian influences. I like the quiet Technicolor flicker of songs like the Portuguese “Evaporar” as much as the jerky fun of “How To Hang A Warhol,” and all the shades in between. Binki Shapiro’s vocal contributions on this album are especially charming, as she croons out of my stereo like an old-time Victrola. [original review]
HONORARY TOPS (should have been on last year’s damn list): In Rainbows(physical release) Radiohead Because I was overwhelmed and ignorant at the end of 2007, and didn’t give this my undivided attention until someone sat me down in a darkened room and made me really, really listen to it.
The Confiscation EP, A Musical Novella Samantha Crain(Ramseur Records) Also from the excellent Ramseur label, 22-year-old Oklahoman Samantha Crain has Choctaw Indian roots and a dusky earnestness to her alto voice. The five songs here tell a cohesive story (a musical novella indeed) with shimmering, unvarnished truth. [original review]
LISTEN: Once again this year, I’ll be appearing on NPR’s World Cafe with David Dye on January 1st to talk about stuff from this list! We have a lot of fun. You should listen (online, or via your local station that carries the show), and tell your mom to listen too. I know mine will be.
They are called The Gaslight Anthem, they’re from New Jersey (natch) and they have struck chords of urgency and passion inside of me something fierce. Lead singer Brian Fallon grew up in a home four blocks from E Street (yes, that one) and their music pays a nod to urgent elements of Springsteen, the Hold Steady and Lucero. Bringing a punk aesthetic to the music of their idols, they embody an audacious belief that music can still be heard “like a shot through my skull to my brain.”
I’ve been listening to this acoustic set all afternoon, and identifying so strongly with the high-resolution magnification of emotions laid bare in these lines. There is a resignation that becomes razor-sharp when all the punk defiance in the ragged yell of the album version is stripped away. The way Fallon sings in “Great Expectations” about seeing tail lights last night in dreams about his old life, and the baldfaced line “everybody left me, Mary, why wouldn’t you?” just absolutely kills me.
Not that it needed it (their album The ’59 Sound is easily one of my tops this year), but these acoustic versions completely reinvent their music in sepia shades of Nebraska.
Today marks the release of All Aboard: A Tribute To Johnny Cash, featuring The Gaslight Anthem and Ben Nichols of Lucero in a one-two punch, along with artists like Chuck Ragan, Dresden Dolls (featuring Franz Nicolay of The Hold Steady) and a variety of other punk/indie/Americana bands. Some artists I’ve not previously heard of, but they do the songs an interesting turn. Aside from a few missteps, in general the rough edges of this collection suit the songs well.
TRACKLISTING: 1. Man In Black – The Bouncing Souls 2. Country Boy – Fallen From The Sky 3. Wreck Of The Old ’97 – Chuck Ragan (Hot Water Music) 4. Let The Train Whistle Blow – Joe McMahon (Smoke or Fire) 5. Delia’s Gone – Ben Nichols (Lucero) 6. God’s Gonna Cut You Down – The Gaslight Anthem 7. Cocaine Blues – The Loved Ones 8. Give My Love To Rose – OnGuard (feat. Jason Shevchuk of Kid Dynamite and None More Black) 9. I Still Miss Someone – Casey James Prestwood (Hot Rod Circuit) 10. Hey Porter – MxPx 11. Cry, Cry, Cry – The Flatliners 12. Ballad of a Teenage Queen – The Dresden Dolls feat. Franz Nicolay of The Hold Steady 13. Folsom Prison Blues – Chon Travis (Love = Death) 14. There You Go – The Sainte Catherines 15. I Walk The Line – Russ Rankin (Good Riddance, Only Crime)
All proceeds benefit the Syrentha Savio Endowment for underprivileged breast cancer patients; we can all rock for breasts. That seems like a pretty unifying and worthy cause. Buy the album for ten bucks on Anchorless Records.
Also, good neighbors take note: Ben Nichols and Chuck Ragan are playing (along with Tim Barry, Jon Snodgrass and Austin Lucas) tomorrow and Thursday nights in Colorado as part of this “Revival Tour.” Hallelujah.
Name: Heather Browne Location: Colorado, originally by way of California Giving context to the torrent since 2005.
"I love the relationship that anyone has with music: because there's something in us that is beyond the reach of words, something that eludes and defies our best attempts to spit it out. It's the best part of us, probably, the richest and strangest part..."
—Nick Hornby, Songbook
"Music has always been a matter of energy to me, a question of Fuel. Sentimental people call it Inspiration, but what they really mean is Fuel." —Hunter S. Thompson
Mp3s are for sampling purposes, kinda like when they give you the cheese cube at Costco, knowing that you'll often go home with having bought the whole 7 lb. spiced Brie log. They are left up for a limited time. If you LIKE the music, go and support these artists, buy their schwag, go to their concerts, purchase their CDs/records and tell all your friends. Rock on.
That second song is a cover of something originally by Canadian band Lightning Dust, a cousin band to Black Mountain. Originally woven in Amber Webber’s delicate croon on 2009′s Infinite Light (Jagjaguwar), Fallon reinvents it here as his own sad dirge of Americana. When I met him last year, Fallon told me he was thinking of recording a solo album. Since I love these acoustic sets, I’d be very interested in hearing that effort.
Name: Heather Browne
