[rating=3.00]
Since their 2008 breakthrough LP, The ’59 Sound, The Gaslight Anthem have tread perilously close to pastiche. But sincerity has never been a make-or-break element in their music; The Gaslight Anthem are nothing if not sincere about the type of American road rock they trade in. How else could we accept their Springsteenian level of bravado or their saccharine aesthetic that’s imagines itself as equal parts Steinbeck and Counting Crows? For every track that seemed to cross that line, there was always a calling to their songs that switched that judgmental part of your brain off. And why not? It’s so easy to mindlessly pump your fists to tracks like “Old White Lincoln,” “American Slang,” and “Handwritten,” and, also, to ignore their debt to classic rock while running down their new brand of American folklore.
All that crashes against a brick wall on Get Hurt.
On Get Hurt, their influences are worn out and have long since given up on waiting in the wings. Now, they’re center-stage, outshining the band itself. I suppose we should have seen it coming. But the band took enough side steps (especially on their promising American Slang) to make us accept their good-natured cribbing. But, let’s call bullshit on Get Hurt, because The Gaslight Anthem demand honesty above all else. Get Hurt is an album clearly influenced by singer Brian Fallon’s personal troubles and his woe-is-me lyricisms are all over the album. At best, they sound like genuine cries of abandonment (“the arms that used to hold me / now they’ve done me harm”) at worst they’re tired tropes about moving on (“I think I’m gonna move to California / Momma, can you say a prayer for me? / I heard they don’t get so low down / I heard they never bleed / not like we bleed”). When the language of love and pain fails on Get Hurt (as it often does), there’s a lazy lyrical crutch that takes its place. Chariots swing low, pills are taken, love is unrequited, and, worst of all, song titles are spelled out in exacting and cringing fashion. A quick glance through them can tell you exactly how they’ll sound without hearing a single note come through the speakers: “Stay Vicious” is a terrible exercise in grunge riffage, “Get Hurt” is a lonely ballad of pain, “Rollin’ and Tumblin’” is a white man singing the blues, and “Selected Poems” is…Jesus, does that one even need an explanation? And who even knows what the “Red Violins” in Fallon’s dreams are? If it’s not a misguided metaphor, then I’ts probably a literal dream about red violins. Where once they was substance, now there’s only vapidity.
All of this is to say, listening to Get Hurt is a painful reference game of spot-the-classic. Springsteen is here, of course, and so is Thin Lizzy, Nirvana, Van Morrison, The Replacements, and trove of others more talented. There’s nothing wrong about borrowing a bit from those who came before, as long as the perception of newness can exist along with a harkening back to the forefathers. But for some reason, The Gaslight Anthem can’t even muster up the energy to try and make the songs sound like something genuine and listenable on Get Hurt. The best thing to say about the LP is that’s it’s not entirely offensive; some of it is even repeatable. For all its melodrama, “Get Hurt” will get stuck in your head for days and “Stay Vicious” is surprising on some level to hear the band move away from the three-chord, powerhouse structure that they’ve worn out. But congratulations to you, dear listener, if you can make it all the way to “Helter Skeleton” (ugh, even typing that title hurts) without an eye roll or two.
It’s hard to take Get Hurt seriously. Coming on the heels of their middling LP, B-Sides, Get Hurt is stuck squarely in that purgatory of songs that aren’t quite good enough for album cuts. Call it B-Sides Vol. 2, if you like, but even that may be too generous of a title. Because the real hurt comes from hearing a band with some goodwill and potential blow it all on half-baked tracks and lovelorn poetry. Maybe the album makes more sense after a recent heartbreak, or maybe someone should erase the band’s collective music collections and have them start from scratch. Maybe then they would sound more like themselves instead of a pale imitation of their influences.
