The Greatest of Some Time, According to a Few
One of the more interesting things about getting older is our appreciation of music. I went through my high school and college years with a handful of bands that I loved and respected. When they released new albums, these were significant events in my life. Inevitably, as we age, so do these artists. Some don’t survive for very long, many have a small window when they produce great music. As this select few dwindles, there are fewer and fewer new artists coming up that we enjoy to take their place. Let’s face it, music is for young people, and I’ve left that demographic long ago.
One exception to this rule for me has been a band called The Gaslight Anthem (from here foreword abbreviated to GA), a rare, younger band whose music I’ve enjoyed and admired. Now, having been through the aging process with other artists, it’s now interesting to watch how these bands grow up, and finding out what their adulthood will look like; if indeed they have one.
GA released a new album, and I recently read an article about its release. Like the old fart that I am, I had ordered the cd and had not received it yet, so I was reading the article having not yet heard the songs. He was critical of GA, Brian Fallon in particular, who is the vocalist and songwriter. To summarize, he basically accused the band of trying and failing to emulate artists who had come before them, while having no identity of their own. I’ll resist the urge to provide a wholesale critique of his review, as this really misses the point I’m aiming at.
The Beatles. The Rolling Stones. Elvis Presley. Led Zeppelin. Jimi Hendrix. Bob Dylan. Bruce Springsteen. My appreciation for music grew up under the shadows of names like that. This is not to say I listened to them, they were just the heroes of the generations before mine. I respect them, as I respect anyone who has been able to have success making music, but none of this stuff is my music. In the review mentioned above, the reviewer used Bruce Springsteen as the standard that he accused GA of attempting to replicate, and in failing to do so had no identity of their own. I’ve listened to just enough Springsteen to realize that his was not my kind of music. So, for my taste, GA’s inability to sound like Springsteen would be an unintended success, if I believed they were trying to sound like Bruce, which I don’t.
I am just sick and tired of older generations contending theirs was the greatest music and everything that follows is crap. I have to resist these feelings in myself. I don’t understand most of what is going on in music today, but it seems that each generation has trouble understanding and being understood by the others; music seems to be a conduit for this angst between them. There is no greatest of all time. There is only that rare handful of artists that were able to make a lasting impact on the audience who listened to their music and went to their shows. They may have even influenced the music of those to come, but that doesn’t mean they won’t be forgotten in a generation or two. I won’t bow the knee to the Beatles, Bruce or any of the rest of them. They were your kings, not mine.
Here’s a quote from the review, just to troll for condescension:
When Fallon sings, yet again, about feeling big feelings while flippin' around the radio dial, like he does in "Mae" and the zippy title track, it fails the bullshit test. Sorry, dude, but you grew up during one of the worst eras for rock radio ever. There's no way you romanced Mary or Betty back in the late '90s to the dulcet sounds of Mudvayne. It's more likely you fell in love with Mackenzie or Taylor while downloading a torrent of Rancid albums.
Music means something to every generation, no matter what era one happened to land in. The radio in Brian’s lyric is a symbol. Music is transcendent, that is why we turn the radios on in our own confined, sometimes bleak circumstances. Music points to something that could someday release us from our fetters, something that could reunite a fractured race of men, and maybe someday lead us home.
The most valid criticism that could be made of GA’s music, is to question its sincerity. It drips with nostalgia and the emotional depth is a bit startling. If an artist is going to hang it out there like Brian does, it strikes a chord with some, and probably misses wildly with others. The funny thing for me personally, is I don’t consider myself nostalgic. My logical mind tells me I don’t want any part of my youth back, but my connection to these songs makes me think that, on some level, I wish I could be nostalgic for an adolescence I’m not sure existed. I’ve always been a lyrics guy, so it always surprises me how Brian is able to conjure such emotion with a relatively simple vocabulary. I hesitate to share lyrics, since I always think it’s best to hear them with the music and in the context of the song and the album; but I offer a few nonetheless. From the title track, ‘Handwritten’:
And to ease the loss of youth
And how many years I've missed you
These lines stood out to me. When I considered their back catalog of songs, I’m pretty sure every song they’ve written could be categorized loosely by one of these three lines. This song feels like a declaration: Yes, we know who we are, we know what we write, we make these songs ourselves, by hand, and we do it for our audience. One more line, same song:
And with this pen, I thee wed from my heart to your distress
I share this lyric because I think it lands on the ultimate tipping point of this band. If you don’t buy it, this line sounds incredibly cheesy. But, if it strikes you as sincere, if you believe he means what he’s singing about, then you can admire the aim of his artistic endeavor. It’s easy to dismiss, we don’t connect this way much any more.
As I said in the beginning, it will just be interesting to see what this band grows in to. My years in music fandom are littered with bands who simply lost me somewhere in their creative arc. I loved them in the beginning, but somewhere along the way I just couldn’t listen anymore (Wilco and Radiohead to name a couple). I haven’t listened to this GA record enough to say where it stacks up with the rest of their catalog, but I’m enjoying it so far and it should be at least a strong addition, at best it could be the best so far.
As I opened the cd packaging, I noticed that Nick Hornby wrote an essay in the liner notes, so I wanted to close with a thought from a pretty damn good writer:
And the second is this: you think twice, write, play and sing as though you have a right to stand at the head of a long line of cool people- you recognise that the Clash and Little Richard got here first, but they’re not around anymore, so you’re going to carry on the tradition, and you’re going to do it in your own voice, and with as much conviction and authenticity and truth as you can muster. And if you can pull that off, you’ll be amazed at how fresh you can sound.
And the Gaslight Anthem sound fresh. Anyone who has ever been frustrated by anything- a girl, a boy, a job, a self (especially that)- can listen to this music and feel understood and energised. (And if I feel energised, Lord knows what they’re going to do to you.) And I’m beginning to suspect that they, like, read books, too. ‘Great Expectations’ - now there’s a great title for a song. And here, ‘Howl’ - there’s another one. Rockers who read. Songwriters who are not scared to go head-to-head with everyone else in rock’s great tradition. The Gaslight Anthem are my kind of people.”
