I think the album was about a year old when I wrote this.
Listening to The ’59 Sound, I’ve just decided that The Gaslight Anthem is too fucking sincere for it to be cool to like them. But I like them anyway. My God, who doesn’t know people who think the way their protagonists do? It’s like Bruce Springsteen minus any pretext of subtlety. I don’t care if that’s good or bad or sloppy or whatever. They remind me of songs I used to sing with an old friend. He had a song called “Guy Named Me” and it was brilliant. “Why’d you have to go/and marry and guy named Joe/Should’ve married a guy named me…”
If you don’t know people who think, every now and then, the way people in Gaslight Anthem songs do, you’re way more sophisticated than I’ll ever be. You tell that to Janey if she writes.
Chris Cocca 