Album Review: The Gaslight Anthem - Handwritten

Posted by Anthony - 5th September 2012

The Gaslight Anthem are a New Jersey punk rock 4 piece band, first appearing in 2007 with the album Sink or Swim. That was followed byThe '59 Sound in 2008 and American Slang in 2010. Now we have the band's fourth album, Handwritten, and the first on a major label, Mercury.

The band members are leader Brian Fallon on vocals and guitar, Alex Rosamilia on guitar, Alex Levine on bass and Benny Horowitz on drums. They have written all 11 of the songs on the new album. The producer is Brendan O'Brien who has a long history as an engineer, producer and musician. Coincidentally he has worked with Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, to whom The Gaslight Anthem have often been compared sound wise.

Handwritten is the band's most mature album to date but does retain the familiar punk grunge attack, although in a more commercial form. Fallon has a growly American voice ideally suited to this style of music. Instrumentally the album is mainly guitars and drums with the very occasional introduction of keyboards and strings.

A single called “45” preceded the release of Handwritten and is the first track on it. This gained much praise but I find it a disappointment as an album opener, suffering from being a rather average song.

The second track is the title track, Handwritten, and is a big improvement. Good drums and excellent heavy bass on an involving song with better guitar work.

Here Comes My Man is unfortunately nondescript.

Mulholland Drive is an example of how an average song can be lifted with an imaginative arrangement, in this case an intermittent marching drum beat and excellent solo guitar playing.

Keepsake is a further good song with a stronger melody and some grungy guitars.

Too Much Blood is the best track on the album. A medium paced heavy rocker featuring melodic guitar work. Fallon does a great job on the vocals and again the drums and bass work well to drive it through.

Howl takes us on a short punk romp but has to rely on the backing vocals to capture our attention.

Biloxi Parish is another hard hitting rocker with huge crashing guitars. Just a shame that the song is not stronger.

Desire is a weak song and fails to gain our interest.

Mae leaves the crashing guitars aside for a moment to provide a gentler track and the result is effective. It could have done with a stronger melody.

National Anthem is the closer and continues the slower pace. It is an acoustic style track with some string backing and with Fallon's vocal to the fore. Very nice but rather a quiet way to end a hard rocking album.

Overall this is a good album which could have been better with, in places, more attention paid to the quality of the songwriting and rather more effort put into moving away from the Springsteen sound.