The Brickbat

Why The Gaslight Anthem is the Best Band in the World

Posted on 23. Jul, 2009 by Sean in Featured, Music Reviews

I saw Gaslight Anthem three times on their last tour.  I normally would never, EVER do that for a band, but this band is different for me.  Rare is the band that inspires a near cult like loyalty on my part.  And rarer still is the band that I will go see in concert SIX times in an eight month span.  Concert tickets aren’t free, you know and in this economy we’re all trying to spend wiser.  But still…it’s Gaslight Anthem.  And they’re the greatest band in the world.

Breakthrough bands are not just great musicians or great songwriters.  They aren’t just great at marketing themselves.  They aren’t just lucky in the timeliness with which they burst onto the scene.  Truly great bands incorporate all of these factors into making them the biggest bands in the world.

The Beatles came along when rock and roll was in its infancy and they turned music and the entire industry itself on its ear.  They progressed and reinvented themselves so many times that their forward thinking inspired millions of copycats.  They changed the course of rock and roll forever.

Nirvana came along at the end of a horrible recession, in the post Reagan/Bush I years that were filled with cynicism and anger and frustration.  They came along as the perfect mouthpiece to articulate all those feelings and they blew the doors off of pop music and even pop culture.  So apropos to the time, they even knocked Michael Jackson’s Dangerous off its Number 1 perch on the Billboard charts.

Now these are just two examples of bands that I love and band that I feel exploded in a manner unique to music and radically shifted the direction rock was going in by spawning hundreds or even thousands of bands that were influenced by this radical departure from the mainstream.   Arguments can be made for countless other bands from Led Zeppelin to the Stones to The Clash to U2, etc., etc..  I’m not comparing Gaslight Anthem with any of those world-changing, history making bands but I see in this band something powerful forming and people are beginning to take notice.  I won’t go so far as to say it’s a movement, but it’s a unity, a purpose in their fans to advance the music and to celebrate the greatness that they emit in every one of their songs and every one of their live performances.

It was only a matter of time, but the celebrity obsession had to start backfiring eventually, didn’t it?  In these economic times how much can we really relate to a ballplayer making $20 million a year or the movie star making that much per movie?  Who can afford to jet to the Riviera like these insipid socialites you see on TV?  Do we give two shits about Heidi and Spencer anymore?  Or the fat cats in their ivory towers sucking the blood out of the less fortunate so they can show their shareholders a one point gain on their company’s stock are hardly role models.  Whereas,  the blue collar, hardworking everyman has become the person we are slowly regressing to and choosing to emulate.  At least I hope that’s the way we’re heading.  These are the people that built and sacrificed for this country and it’s about time they get the same respect and appreciation vapid celebrities have been monopolizing the past few years.  There is a nobility in working hard and providing for your family without any fanfare or accolades; in remaining loyal to your home and your friends.  Gaslight Anthem are proponents of these simple, yet seemingly long lost ideals.  They are cut from that same working class hero cloth that bore us Bruce Springsteen, John Mellencamp and their red blooded, wholly American, ilk.

The thing that distinguishes Gaslight from the baby boomer rock and roll artists, for me, is the tone and content of their songs.  Sure, they sometimes have that unquestionably sorrowful awareness that things can be bleak and your hard work can last a lifetime with little to no reward, but there’s also a sense of optimism and wistful nostalgia that harkens you back to a simpler time with blissful memories.  I know Brian Fallon wasn’t going to sock hops and drinking malted milk shakes with his best gal back in the 50’s, but he knows what that time was like in our country – the ending of a miserable world war, full of sacrifice and despair and the bursting forth into a whole new era of exuberance, and optimism.  It’s been a while since we’ve had that kind of pure, unabashed hopefulness without a slight dollop of the pessimism that had permeated our daily lives in the Dubya era.  It’s like turning a huge ship, as far as the speed in which things can change, but the point is that hope is not lost and the winds of change will blow if you’re determined enough.

The best bands come along at a time when the world is really ready to listen to what they have to say and their message is both intelligent and poignant.  Gaslight have arrived at a time of great fear in our country, but also of great hope.  The election of a black President - with the crumbling of our world standing, as well as our economic superiority – has both given us cause for panic as well as a sense that we can be the first generation since our grandparents to bring about a real change to our planet.  We are aware that Reagan-esque consumer spending sprees are no longer a viable option.  We know that the world’s climate is a serious problem that must be addressed through cutting back on fossil fuels and finding new ways to create energy.  We know that in order to truly move forward as a society we have to start taking better care of our sick, our children, our elderly, our neighbors.  We’re all in this together and Gaslight Anthem is the soundtrack to those feelings.  I listen to The ’59 Sound and I feel proud to be an American and I feel like there isn’t anything we can’t do.  The older generations they sing about, our parents, their parents – they laid the groundwork and we can carry on that torch they’ve passed on to us.  The world is changing radically, but some of our base ideals and traditions should not.

A particular quote from Stephen Chbosky’s coming of age classic, Perks of Being a Wallflower springs to mind when I listen to The ’59 Sound – “I feel infinite.”  It’s been a while since music made me feel that way.  Thanks, Gaslight Anthem for renewing the faith.

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