Album Review: The Gaslight Anthem- Handwritten (Craig's take)

Sports commentator Dan Hicks, while announcing the 2009 US Open,  gave a now famous call as he watched Tiger Woods sink a 10-foot putt to tie on the 18th hole on Sunday; “Expect anything different?” he said. He encapsulated all the anticipation and met expectations in just three short words. I can’t help but replay this phrase in my brain every time I listen to The Gaslight Anthem’s new record, Handwritten.

Never before have I picked my Album of the Year before I had even heard a song from the album. But the way in which I was anticipating Handwritten was such that I never really had any other choice but to proclaim it as AOTY from the get go. What I didn’t anticipate was the album’s complete ability to meet and exceed my lofty expectations. From the first single “45” (which Donald still believes is the Song of the Year) to the final track, the somber “National Anthem”, this album is 100 percent The Gaslight Anthem. We’ve already spoken about our absurd love of “45” on this blog, so I’m not going to discuss the blazing opening track anymore from here on out.

Title track “Handwritten” stakes its claim for the title of my own song of the year. The only other song that even comes close in my eyes is another title track, The Early November’s “In Currents”. Where this song truly shines is the beautiful bridge. “Here in the dark I cherish the moonlight, I’m in love with the way you’re in love with the night, and it travels from heart to limb to pen. And we waited for sirens that never come. We only write by the moon, every word handwritten,” sings vocalist Brian Fallon as the song comes to a wonderful climax. But what really sinks this portion of the song home are the light hums in the background that set the scene perfectly for Fallon’s word to connect with the listener on a personal level. 

Fallon takes a step out of his comfort zone on the following track, “Here Comes My Man”, a song written from the perspective of a woman. This is an experiment that the experienced songwriter has never attempted before. He pulls off the different outlook remarkably well, with the sincerity in his words ringing out, even though he is a man singing them.

The one-two punch of “Mulholland Drive” and “Keepsake” follow “Here Comes My Man.” The former features on of the albums of best bass lines, a driving number by bassist Alex Levine. The chorus features an interesting and unusual vocal rhythm when Fallon says the line “I’d just die if you ever took your love away,” which sets the song apart from its counterparts. The latter features a seering guitar line and lyrics that mention a “deadbeat dad” character and the narrators desire to at least reconnect with this person who is supposed to be playing a paternal role in his life. Both songs stake a claim for best track on the album, but as I said before the title track just barely edges both out. That’s not a slight against those two tracks at all though, as if they were on any other album released this year they would be easy standouts.

Fans of the band’s 2007 debut probably won’t find a song quite like that album on Handwritten, but “Howl” is probably the song that comes closest to equaling the punk energy of those tracks. Coming in at just over two minutes long and not even featuring a real chorus, it still feels complete in an odd way. “Radio, oh radio, do you believe there’s still some magic left/ Somewhere inside our souls?” Fallon sings over a punchy drum beat from Benny Horowitz in what may be a biting criticism of modern radio. Pop music just doesn’t have the same heart on the sleeve emotion that the Gaslight Anthem display so effectively on all of their albums.

I really struggled to find something to critique on this album. The album’s production, by legendary producer Brendan O’Brien, is perfection. The mix of each backing track and sound is spot on and smooth as silk. The band’s production has come a long way since Sink or Swim, but that’s to be expected with a major label budget. The album’s “lowlight,” if you want to call it that, comes in the form of “Too Much Blood,” a song that itself isn’t bad, but it just goes on a minute longer than it needs to. Fallon is doing his best Seattle grunge impression on the track which is intriguing to say the least, and the song still features a powerful distorted guitar riff from guitarist Alex Rosamilla, but the songs is just not at the same level of perfection as the other tracks. 

The final two tracks “Mae” and “National Anthem” tie the album together by being polar opposites of the opening two tracks. If the first two tracks on Handwritten are the snap shot of the entire entity, then these two tracks at the end of the album are the negatives to that photograph. Mae is a tender track that features the best input from Levine on the entire album as a perfect ascending and descending  bass line kicks in just after the key line in the song “we wait for kingdom come, with the radio on.” The final track, “National Anthem” is an acoustic number, but it doesn’t feel forced or cliché as some closing tracks do. The string arrangements, although subtle, serve to tie the entire track together and just add one more beautiful element to one of the most beautiful albums of the past 20 years.

The Bottom Line: Seriously, “expect anything different?”

Reccomended if you rock: British author Nick Hornby said this perfectly in an introduction he wrote for the album packaging: “It would be stupid to try and tell you that the music you’re listening to is like nothing you’ve ever heard before. The songs on the Gaslight Anthem’s latest album are three or four minutes long, most of them, and they’re played on loud electric guitars, and there are drums, and to be honest, if you haven’t heard anything like this before, then you’re probably listening to the wrong band anyway. What’s great about the Gaslight Anthem is that there’s an assumption you’ll have heard something like this before - on the first Clash album, or on Born to Run, or the first Tom Petty And The Heartbreakers album, or maybe on a Little Richard record. But he puts it tellingly when he says how the Gaslight Anthem reconcile this: "You think, write, play and sing as though you have a right to stand at the head of a long line of cool people - you recognize that the Clash and Little Richard got here first, but they’re not around any more, 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”