The dead eyes of the city have got me reeling

It's very rare that I find a band I connect with on every level. Not since Against Me! was bashing out lo-fi seven inches about drinking and politics and fucking have I heard a band that fucking SPOKE to me like a voice out of the darkness, grasping my head like smoke fingers from an old Daffy Duck cartoon and drawing me into a world of its own making.

The Gaslight Anthem are one of the few bands that can sound traditional and HOLY FUCK DID THEY JUST PULL OFF A SOUND THAT AWESOME all at the same time. They take a Bruce Springsteen template and drag it kicking and screaming into the punk age, stripping all the excess hoo-ha and leaving the kicking, hoarse corpse behind to toast you and push you off a cliff all in one fucked up and demented show of bug-eyed love. It's like a sad drunk looking in the mirror at the bar and dimly seeing the future in some weird bastardized take on Dante, who himself was the original sellout because he had this awesome story but hey the Catholics were breathing down his neck like a major label and he was like FUCK IT I'M GOING ALL THE WAY DOWN THE WHORE TRAIN TONIGHT, ASSHOLES!

Brian Fallon is one of the greatest songwriters of his generation and if you don't think so you can go back to listening to crap like Xiu Xiu and Battles and remember to not say a fucking word to any of us about what you think music is because obviously your opinion carries no more weight that a decrepit refugee woman limping along when by rights she should be sitting on a porch drinking lemonade. YOUR OPINIONS MEAN FUCKING DICK ALL. This goes for everyone.

(Where the fuck was I? God bless word processors.) Dude can write a song like a smiling, goofy savant sitting on the porch in some suburban hovel, making the most beautiful fucking thing you've ever heard. From the records you expect him to be old and grizzled and smelling of Night Train, but he's a fresh-scrubbed neophyte who would play you a song then look at you smiling, waiting for you to say something. Goddamned does this guy cut to the fucking quick.

Gaslight Anthem remind me of the redemptive power of rock 'n' roll, of those moments when you're too drunk and sad and stoned and exhausted and don't feel like you can take one more step in the death march we call life, and then the melodies and wild drum hits remind you to keep putting one foot in front of the other, there's better times ahead, and if you stop you're going to miss the beef stew and beer maids just down the road. They can remind you of the balls-forward blasts and the nights you spent in shithole towns like Fredericksburg, Virgina, drinking and looking at stars, and lines like "my first sin was a feat that made me old" make you just want to curl up and die immediately because nothing else will suffice.

So you can take your haircut bands and your quasi-emo rockers and metalcore fucktards and posturing and blow it out your ass like a potato gun. This band is a true guiding light and one that will stay with you as long as you need them. If we ever needed a new band to take the hair rockers out back and shoot them, this is the group to do it. This is the antidote to all the crybabies with weedwhacker haircuts passing for underground these days. For every band more concerned with t-shirt design than writing songs, Gaslight Anthem is here to show you what the fuck rock n roll is all about. Give a copy of Sink or Swim to your little brother and maybe he'll sell those Yellowcard CDs for weed money. And that will be a beautiful thing.

For the hardcore GA fans here, I'm including two songs Brian Fallon recorded with This Charming Man, which was basically the precursor to the band I've spent too many words writing about.

Wooderson - http://www.mediafire.com/?3cjvlex9iux

Navesink Banks - http://www.mediafire.com/?mzuw4izyd4x

We're Getting a Divorce (You Keep the Diner) - http://www.mediafire.com/?daeszrboeg3

Wherefore Art Thou, Elvis? - http://www.mediafire.com/?gdgtp8iongz

Blue Jeans and White T-Shirts - http://www.mediafire.com/?zzeqc9pc41p

This Charming Man - Sometimes You Eat the Bar - http://www.mediafire.com/?mnmxkdmszbb

This Charming Man - Cut the Rope (Before It Hangs Us Both) - http://www.mediafire.com/?maoczj139h3