 
When The Gaslight Anthem released their second
studio ‘The 59 Sound’ back in 2008
they were pretty much an unknown band but then
suddenly they were featured on the front cover
of a few major publications with these publications
claiming that the Gaslight Anthem are about to
become everyone’s new favourite band and
they weren’t wrong as overnight thousands
of people picked up ‘The 59 Sound’
and instantly became fans of the band and ever
since then The Gaslight Anthem have been touring
the world over many times and have even been invited
out on a few occasions to support one of their
main musical influences the boss Bruce Springsteen.
When it comes to releasing new material The Gaslight
Anthem have stuck to a strict ratio of releasing
an new album every two years which now brings
us to the bands forth studio album ‘Handwritten’
which see’s the band up their game even
more with a solid 11 track album which is full
of stadium rock anthems and if the bands rapid
rise to fame is anything to go by it won’t
be long until The Gaslight Anthem start headlining
stadiums and playing their perfectly written songs
to their full potential.
The album opens with ‘45’ which happens
to be the lead single from the album and it is
one hell of beastly track which starts off sounding
like a lost Foo Fighters song but as it progresses
Fallon’s fierce melodic vocals grab you
by the balls and spin you around leaving you on
an almighty high, the drums beats are fantastic
with Benny Harowitz seriously giving his kick
a good pounding which leaves me wondering why
when you get involved in a best drummer in the
world conversation Harowitz is never brought up
as he is super talented and obviously super under
rated, and as for the rest of the instrumental
work on the track it is just spot on with bouncy
basslines and twitchy guitar work.
When I first put ‘Handwritten’ on
I found it really tough to get past the opening
track ‘45’ as it is just so good that
I ended up having it on repeat for the best part
of two hours and I am pretty sure it had a similar
effect on anyone that has heard the song as it
is easily the anthem of the summer, but as soon
as I let the album progress I realised there was
another 10 amazing tracks waiting to be listened
to.
Title track ‘Handwritten’ is another
solid radio friendly track which has a good potential
to being a future single for the band, the lyrics
are well written and sung in such an upbeat way
whilst the band jam together letting off a slight
retro sound which reaches your ears with pure
bliss.
‘Here Comes My Man’ is quite a soulful
sounding song with its catchy chorus of ‘Oh-Sha-La-La’.
‘Mulholland Drive’ is another rock
anthem with some extremely tasty guitar work especially
the solo towards the middle section of the song.
‘Keepsake’ opens up with some of the
best instrumental work found on the album, whilst
the album closing track ‘National Anthem’
sees’s the Gaslight Anthem take on an acoustic
folk sound that is full of raw emotion and ballsy
singing.
It would be a near on impossible task to pick
a favourite album from The Gaslight Anthem as
each album that they have released have stood
out in their own little way and ‘Handwritten’
easily follows this routine on as it is crammed
full of anthems and have a major last ability
factor which will easily keep fans of the band
happy for the next two years whilst waiting for
album number five.
5/5
Review by Trigger
|
