The Gaslight Anthem - The ’59 Sound

While there’s a distinct air to most of the punk music you might be familiar with – and plenty of distinct hair to go with it – there are plenty of niches and crevices in the genre that breed all sorts of wonderful, musical organisms. None of it is subjectively any worse than the other, just different beasts. There are your Black Flag and The Germs-types that kick up plenty of fuss; they don’t call it hardcore because of all the polite letters they’re writing to their local politicians, after all. And some of it feels like a wave washing over you, the same angry sensibilities distilled into a sound that soaks into your pores rather than hitting you in the side of the head. The Gaslight Anthem, at their best, falls squarely into that second camp.

Yes, this is punk. But this is punk with a homey hearth to gather round; their particular brand of heartland rock has an honest, heartfelt core that immediately brings to mind that particular era of Bruce Springsteen and Tom Petty, where men couldn’t dance, and women seemed to perpetually live in the passenger seat when they weren’t on their daddy’s front porch. Dated song aphorisms aside, The Gaslight Anthem aren’t stuck in the past whatsoever. The New Jersy, USA rockers are a well-oiled, modern music making machine so sharp that you’ll cut your face on them and with no end of punch. Compare a slow burn with a car crash and you might get a clearer idea.

Here’s the moment you’ve all been waiting for (unless you’re one of those types who listens to the track before reading the article, you savage); “The ’59 Sound” is our most deserving pick for Rock Song of the Week this time around. If this sort of thing tickles your fancy, they’ve just released a track with the aforementioned Bruce Springsteen from their first album in nearly a decade and it’s well worth a look up. Just remember to listen to this one a few times first, though – our ears take a real workout finding these tracks for you, and we spent all the ENT bill money on battle jacket patches.