The Gaslight Anthem

Tonight’s show in Birmingham turns out to be the first of The Gaslight Anthem’s UK and European tour; they were scheduled to play Portsmouth the evening before but ended up getting stuck in Scotland after their plane had to be diverted there. What a welcome. Gaslight are a band who have had rapid, whirl-wind success, and as they come onstage and break into ‘Great Expectations’, the opening track on The ’59 Sound, it’s clear that the excitement hasn’t worn off for them yet. Front man Brian Fallon wears a huge grin throughout the entire set, which can’t make singing easy, and an electric energy exudes from the whole band. The audience have already been whipped into a frenzy thanks to a solo set by popular support-act Frank Turner, but ‘Great Expectations’ sees the room erupt into a seething mass of bodies, all belting out the lyrics at the top of their voices.

As this tour is to promote The ’59 Sound, the band’s second full-length album released in August of last year, they play almost every track from this new album, including ‘Old White Lincoln’, ‘Miles Davis & The Cool’ and ‘The Patient Ferris Wheel’. ‘Meet Me By The River’s Edge’, played as an encore, is a definite high-light; it gives Fallon the chance to show off with his vocals, which are surprisingly strong live and in fact a lot more impressive than they sound on the albums. He’s able to make big jumps in vocal range, which just doesn’t come across fully on any of their records.

As well as tracks from this most recent offering, the band plays a fair amount of older material off of debut album Sink or Swim and the Señor and the Queen EP. ‘We Came To Dance’ and ‘Blue Jeans & White T-Shirts’ are particularly popular with the die-hard crowd, who seem to know every word.

Gaslight play classic, traditional rock with a punk edge and manage to pull it off successfully, rather than sounding like bad Springsteen imitators, which is often what people assume to be the case when they hear the words ‘classic’ and ‘rock’ put together. Everything about the band is genuine; there are no White Lies-style affectations about what to wear or which facial expressions to pull. Their unpretentious vitality, combined with a solid selection of rock and roll gems, makes it worth coming all the way to Birmingham on this frost-bitingly cold February evening.