CD Reviews

The Gaslight Anthem | Handwritten

Mercury (2012)

By ALEXANDRA CAVALLO | July 17, 2012

3.0 Stars

These Jersey boys scored longtime Springsteen producer Brendan O'Brien for their fourth studio album, but their heads haven't swelled any for it. Handwritten finds the Gaslight Anthem firmly grounded — all grease, grit, and earnest emotion as visceral as the hometown soil caked beneath their fingernails. It's that bare-boned sincerity that has long set them apart as an old-school rock band amid the modern noise, and excused Brian Fallon his penchant for just-short-of-gimmicky retro nostalgia. It's signature Gaslight, mundane working-class despair tempered by an indomitable strength of spirit. There's real hope beneath the pain in shit-kicking anthems like "45" and "Howl," a breezy sing-a-long that asks, "Do you still believe there's magic left somewhere inside our souls?" The answer: oh, hell yes. One day, kids will listen to this the way I do any Simon & Garfunkel album — foolishly wistful for a bygone era I never knew. With one foot rooted in the past, the band is yet pushing forward, with an album that promises longevity and, maybe, greatness. And though Fallon can't resist a Bette Davis name-check in the token quiet ode "Mae," he's largely free of the grasping for identity that riddled The '59 Sound. He used to wish he was Elvis. These days, he seems pretty okay just being himself.

Review: Joyful Noise
There's not much joy but there's plenty of noise of the rafter-rocking gospel singing variety in Tony Graff's musical dramedy.
Alex Chilton | Free Again: The ''1970'' Sessions
Post–Box Tops and pre-Big Star, Alex Chilton was an 18-year-old Memphis boy on his way to his dual identity: former #1 pop hitmaker, perpetual underground hero.
Cardinal | Hymns
After a nearly two-decade silence, chamber-pop duo Cardinal emerge from their near-mythic hibernation with the sleepy-eyed, Beatles-underwater gem "Northern Soul," which crawls out of the speakers as if to say, "Yeah, we've been gone since 1994 — but really, don't mind us!"
Snow Patrol | Fallen Empires
Word on the street had Snow Patrol looking to change up the big anthem sound for their sixth release.
O'Brother | Garden Window
O'Brother's bio for their debut album, Garden Window, reads in part: "Native American tradition believed taking a picture of someone also took a piece of their soul. O'Brother views this album in the same vein. It captures a piece of them at a time in their lives that they will never get back."
Guided by Voices | Let's Go Eat the Factory
The GBV name on Let's Go Eat the Factory' s label indicates two things to those fans: this is the first record to feature the "classic" Bee Thousand/Alien Lanes line-up since 1996, and this is the first Pollard album to deserve the GBV moniker since the break-up.
Brite Futures | Dark Past
A few years ago, the cutesy teens in Natalie Portman's Shaved Head slid out of Seattle on the hot pink shoulders of robo-bounce kinda-hit "Me + Ur Daughter" and the cheap intrigue of a ridiculous moniker.
A Place to Bury Strangers | Onwards to the Wall
Onwards to the Wall clocks in at 16 minutes and 35 seconds, and it could shatter into smithereens at any moment.
Cloud Nothings | Attack on Memory
With Attack on Memory , the third full-length from Cleveland-based Cloud Nothings, 20-year-old frontman Dylan Baldi approaches new, drastically darker material with the same empty-bottle angst that made his previous releases so appealing.
You Me at Six | Sinners Never Sleep
Sinners Never Sleep is a transitional album, though such efforts rarely bode as well for the future as this does.
Imperial Teen | Feel the Sound
Like its title, fifth album Feel the Sound is as generic as doubters have probably always assumed — they sound both relaxed and exhausted.
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