From the New Jersey streets, a new breed of working class storyteller. Meet The Gaslight Anthem, and the next wave of blue collar punk rock.

Words: Philip Wilding

The Gaslight Anthem’s singer, Brian Fallon, is a man refreshingly without guile. “Oh, we’re not reinventing the wheel,” he says cheerily, “I’ve got hundreds of albums that sound like us. If it does sound like we’re different then it’s because we don’t know what we’re doing. Mistakes are OK though, I read that Springsteen was trying to sound like Van Morrison early on but couldn’t get it right, and look at his mistakes…”

The New Jersey band have been making a series of glorious mistakes since last year’s debut Sink Or Swim, and their Señor And The Queen EP released earlier this year to similar, rabid acclaim. The band’s second and strongest album, The ’59 Sound will be out by the time you read this, the title track coming from the album’s initial writing sessions. Fallon, quite rightly, thinks it might be their best song yet.

“We were aware that it sounded better than anything we’d ever done before and that everything had come up to that standard so it was exhilarating and daunting all at once.”

In the US they’ve been staples of the Warped Tour and readily compared to contemporary punk artists like The Loved Ones and Against Me!. You can see the parallels, especially with early Clash, but the latest album leans more towards early Springsteen, The Replacements and even The Hold Steady.

“I grew up on The Replacements’ Let It Be, it’s amazing,” says Fallon, “And Springsteen’s everywhere here, he did it first and best. We all tell the same stories, they’re the same streets that people like Sinatra and Bon Jovi grew up on, it hasn’t changed in 30 years.”

They might be broke, but the buzz around them is still building and they’re out playing live so often they’ve had to give up their day jobs.

“We did stuff like working in a gas station in the day and a pizzeria at night,” says Fallon, “We sold shoes, one of us was a cook.We’re a full-time band now, making less money than we did in those jobs, but I don’t care, Monday has lost all meaning to me.”

And, ultimately, we have to ask – what makes for a great anthem?

“One that says, our country’s good at this, but maybe you could help us fix this as it’s not working out, that’s my kind of anthem! Then horns at the end, horns are always good.”

• The album The ’59 Sound is out now on SideOneDummy Records.

PARK LIFE

“Springsteen’s Greetings From Asbury Park is the album where he was trying everything out, and you can hear the mistakes. It makes you feel good that even he had flaws once.”

“The first Clash album, that was a sound I’d never heard before. It sort of woke me up and made me want to get up and go. It got me started.”
“Sam Cooke’s The Man And His Music, that’s my totem musically, the album you aspire to.”