Brian Fallon has an uncommonly expressive yet familiar voice, the sound of a guy well-versed in the trick of turning introspection into grandiose pronouncements. The Gaslight Anthem frontman’s affinity for those who came before him is evident in his band’s earnest emotions and accessible songs.
Roaring out the gates with 2007’s Sink or Swim, the quartet released a series of records melding the righteous fury of The Clash with the classic-rock storytelling of Bruce Springsteen and Tom Petty.
But in the aftermath of 2014’s Get Hurt, Fallon was ready for a new challenge. The Gaslight Anthem went on “indefinite hiatus” while he dropped four solo albums leaning more heavily into traditional singer/songwriter tropes. The band reunited in 2018 for a brief run of shows to celebrate the 10th anniversary of perhaps their best record, The ’59 Sound, but it wasn’t until 2022 that Fallon had the itch to write new material with The Gaslight Anthem.
“If you try to boil it down to the truest sense of who I feel I am as a writer, I’m a rock guy,” Fallon said in a 2023 interview with Uproxx. “I like songwriter stuff, and I like doing it, but the big thing that really closed the gap for me was that I realized there is nothing that I can do in The Gaslight Anthem that I would need to go and make a record solo.”
The resulting album, 2023’s History Books, mixes elements of Fallon’s solo work with the verve of Gaslight Anthem’s sonic muscle. The aptly titled “Positive Charge” opens with furious guitars and drums before giving way to Fallon’s weathered vocals as he nostalgically sings about the fact that “there were whispers in the vestibules.” Then there’s the title track, a duet with Springsteen that does exactly what you’d expect — rouses emotions through words, voices and sounds as familiar as they are specific, closing with the repeated refrain, “But the time keeps rollin’ us on/rollin’ us on/rollin’ us on.”
The Gaslight Anthem plays the Andrew J Brady Music Center on Aug. 27 at 7 p.m. Info: bradymusiccenter.com.
This story is featured in CityBeat's Aug. 21 print edition.
