Collection of "Handwritten" Reviews

I didn't see this anywhere, so I apologize if it is already posted.

Entertainment Weekly gave the album a B+. It is currently listed at the top of their reviews database, the tab on the main EW site, and the reviews list on the main music page. For those who are going to jump in and criticize the content of the review, keep in mind it's a mainstream entertainment magazine that has a subscription base of 1.8 million per week, so 1) it's positive and reaching a large audience, and 2) don't expect in-depth (this is about as long as the reviews get).

http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,20612868,00.html


EW's GRADE
B+
Details Release Date: Jul 24, 2012; Lead Performance: The Gaslight Anthem; Genre: Rock; Production: Mercury

Bruce Springsteen backed these Jersey boys on guitar during an Asbury Park show last year, and it's easy to understand why he's a fan. As a kid, Gaslight singer Brian Fallon lived a few blocks away from E Street, and the band's fourth album, Handwritten, wears its hardcore-punk-meets-rust-belt-rock sincerity like a bandanna tucked into its back pocket — with songs about rivers and long roads and burnout jobs and guys who never forget where they came from. But unlike other Boss revivalists who treat America like a mythological concept (see: the Killers' Sam's Town), the band's not just riffing on the heartland. They're living in it, writing affecting tributes to real places you can find on a map (''Biloxi Parish,'' ''Mulholland Drive''). Fallon claims the best way to see those places is to ''drive you around with the radio on,'' and then he takes you on that trip, playing music that would thrive on any classic-rock station — from the grunge howl of ''Too Much Blood'' to the Nebraska folk of ''National Anthem'' and dusty-vinyl tribute ''45.'' That last track compares flipping a record over to starting over in life, but these guys don't embrace change so easily. And maybe that's okay. Their album is everything its title suggests: old-school, DIY, and so heartfelt, its emotions might as well be tattooed on its knuckles. B+

Best Tracks:
45
Howl
Handwritten

Christophe wrote:

Gaslight are doing just fine they are on the right track. They are evolving as a band as none of their four albums sound the same. I don't think you need to attempt to reinvent yourself to stay relevant. Just keep making great music and that's exactly what Gaslight are doing

I agree with this. I mean their (god willing) tenth album shouldn't be 11 songs about girls in dresses on a saturday night. But even now it's not.

Brian writes about relationships a lot but so does every other artist on the face of the Earth. Other than that and using his favorite words over and over, I don't think they're repeating themselves any more than is necessary in order call yourselves the same band.

Chords and riffs will be recycled, words will be recycled, it's just the way it is. I'm just thankful that when I put all their music on shuffle, I can tell the difference between all the songs (even if I screw up the titles sometimes).

I think people are just starting to dig into these guys because they can't handle that there's a young band out there actually putting out amazing music. (sorry, reviewers aggravate me )

4.5/5 on Alternativ New, a french webzine. TGA are described as the "rock saviors"

http://www.alternativnews.com/2012/07/chronique-gaslight-anthem-handwritten.html

If a mod wants to merge it in, the Salt Lake Tribune gave the album an A- and said it might be the best rock record of the year. Someone started a new thread on it, so check there unless a mod moves the posts in here.

http://indulge-sound.com/2012/07/22/review-the-gaslight-anthem-handwritten/

On Indulge Sound

A very strong four-star review from American Songwriter magazine, which, of course tends to focus more on...well, you know.

Rating: 4 Stars (out of 5)

On “Here Comes My Man” – the third track of The Gaslight Anthem’s first album on Mercury Records – Brian Fallon’s heartfelt, gravelly voice sings the words “If I wanted to, I could start over again.” And, for a moment, you might think that’s what he’s trying to do with the 2012 release of Handwritten. After the band’s 2010 release of American Slang, and Fallon’s side project work on The Horrible Crowes 2011 release Elsie – two albums where Fallon was clearly trying to vary his sound and progress musically – it seems as though all those departures (for better or worse) were worth it in the end because they’ve led to The Gaslight Anthem’s most consistent and accomplished album to date in Handwritten.

If Fallon and crew have been trying to live up to the amazing success of their 2008 classic The ’59 Sound, you’d be hard pressed to find a better successor than what they produce in Handwritten. It’s an album that grabs you by the throat with its catchy opening track “45” and never really lets up until the last notes of its final acoustic track “National Anthem.”

http://www.americansongwriter.com/2012/07/the-gaslight-anthem-handwritten/

Another very good review from whatever "The Sabotage Times" is (plus they didn't even wait for the actual article to make a Springsteen reference!):

The Gaslight Anthem – Handwritten: Singalongs And Springsteen Riffs

The new album marks the first major label release from the New Jersey boys, but does it follow in being a success like its predecessors?

Looking back over their three album career, it’s hard to come up with a wrong move from The Gaslight Anthem. Given that the band has stuck religiously to their formula of Springsteen-esque riffs, scratchy vocals, punchy guitars and lyrics that document the lives, loves and deaths of youth, you would think someone over at Mercury (their new major-label home after 3 previous independent releases) would be forcing the band to do a Kings Of Leon on us, sex it up, shift a million copies and make some big bucks. But stuck to it, The Gaslight Anthem have. And thankfully it’s exactly what their fans would want from them.

http://www.sabotagetimes.com/music/the-gaslight-anthem-handwritten-singalongs-and-springsteen-riffs/

Blare, an alternative music magazine in Canada, also gives a positive review:

When a songwriter reflects the raw and brittle shade to his honesty, it becomes difficult to resist what he has to say and like so many composers before him, Brian Fallon’s heart has its scars and band-aids and the way it bleeds is truly magnetic. Handwritten isn’t as nostalgic as The Gaslight Anthem’s earlier discog and that’s because through a more immediate supply of fleshed out rock anthems, the New Jersey collective put a focus on tearing out emotions from memories and putting them to words, chords and rhythms. With every biting hook, there’s a ode to ripping heartache (“45″) and when songs like “Mulholland Drive” and “Keepsake” ring with the deep, rich feelings they embody, lines like “I just want to love someone who has the same blood” form stories from their wreck.

http://blaremagazine.com/2012/07/22/review-the-gaslight-anthem-handwritten/

The Washington Times goes a step further, referring to frontman "Bruce Fallon." I'm not kidding.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/jul/23/music-reviews-the-gaslight-anthem-passion-pit/

simo wrote:

The Washington Times goes a step further, referring to frontman "Bruce Fallon." I'm not kidding.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/jul/23/music-reviews-the-gaslight-anthem-passion-pit/

"the moments where the Gaslight Anthem sound as thought they’re attempting a step-by-step recreation of the E Street shuffle"
alright, conffession time. i've never thought Gaslight sounded like Springsteen. granted, i'm not the biggest Springsteen fan and i'm not familiar with all his music. but after seeing him live for the first time a couple weeks ago, i find this even more absurd. enough with the Bruce comparaisons already!

and to whoever wrote that article: do your research

Gaslight's never sounded that much like Bruce, but they spent a good portion of their breakout album referencing him. Similarly, the Drive-By Truckers never sounded much like Lynyrd Skynyrd, but they spent a good portion of their breakout album referencing them.

So both of these bands will draw endless comparisons because of those early lyrical choices.

JackStreetcar wrote:

Gaslight's never sounded that much like Bruce, but they spent a good portion of their breakout album referencing him. Similarly, the Drive-By Truckers never sounded much like Lynyrd Skynyrd, but they spent a good portion of their breakout album referencing them.

So both of these bands will draw endless comparisons because of those early lyrical choices.

Drive-By Truckers

Given all the TGA/Lucero fans there are around I'm surprised at how few TGA/DBT fans there are around.

The guys picked up a hugely important four stars (out of four) review from USA Today, which has a paid circulation of 1.8 million copies per day plus a great presence in hotels, etc. It's not super in-depth but a LOT of people will see it.

Gaslight Anthem fills 'Handwritten' up with feeling

The Gaslight Anthem, Handwritten
* * * * (out of four) ROCK


This is rock 'n' roll as we always hoped it could be: brutally honest, naked emotions and primal, cathartic singalong sounds that pour directly from one band's soul into yours. No posing. No sympathy solicited. On the quartet's fourth album, the Springsteen influence still echoes faintly — band and Boss share a Jersey background, a producer (Brendan O'Brien) and a penchant for arena-filling anthems — but here they stand on their own, barroom-tested and with plenty to say.

http://www.usatoday.com/life/music/reviews/story/2012-07-23/listen-up-gaslight-anthem-handwritten/56445276/1

the guys picked up a 4 (out of 5) star review from the Edmonton Journal/Montreal Gazette.

Rather than shrink from its spiritual heritage, The Gaslight Anthem conscripted professional classicist rock fan Nick Hornby to address it head on, in liner notes praising conviction over innovation: “If you haven’t heard anything like this before, then you’re probably listening to the wrong band.” So the fervour of Springsteen and Strummer still propels this group, but as proud inspiration, not as a replacement for genuine soul.

http://www.edmontonjournal.com/entertainment/Album+reviews+Critics+rate+latest+Gaslight+Anthem+Passion+Jimmy+Cliff+more/6976625/story.html

The A.V. Club - B+

http://www.avclub.com/articles/the-gaslight-anthem-handwritten,82821/

Bea wrote:

simo wrote:

The Washington Times goes a step further, referring to frontman "Bruce Fallon." I'm not kidding.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/jul/23/music-reviews-the-gaslight-anthem-passion-pit/

"the moments where the Gaslight Anthem sound as thought they’re attempting a step-by-step recreation of the E Street shuffle"
alright, conffession time. i've never thought Gaslight sounded like Springsteen. granted, i'm not the biggest Springsteen fan and i'm not familiar with all his music. but after seeing him live for the first time a couple weeks ago, i find this even more absurd. enough with the Bruce comparaisons already!

and to whoever wrote that article: do your research

Bruce hasn't "shuffled" since the early seventies, and if there's an era of Bruce that least resembles Handwritten, it's the early seventies. The obligatory Bruce reference in every article is just comical at this point.

THEY SOUND LIKE THE GASLIGHT ANTHEM!!!

I have listened to so much Bruce and Gaslight this year, aside from the odd bit of lyrical referencing they really are quite different. If they didn't both come from New Jersey I am sure the comparison would hold a lot less weight in the eyes of lazy reviewers.

My other hometown paper (the real one, the Washington Post) gave Handwritten a good review, although it's a bit too snarky for my liking.


Quick Spins: ‘Handwritten’ by the Gaslight Anthem

A short list of things the Gaslight Anthem’s major label debut, “Handwritten,” might remind you of: Bruce Springsteen circa 1978, 1981 and 1985; the Replacements; Otis Redding; that famous Levi’s commercial set to a Walt Whitman poem; Dropkick Murphys and the Clash.

The New Jersey-bred band made a name for itself with a series of indie releases that positioned it as an upwardly mobile Springsteen tribute act — a really great, incredibly derivative bar band with arena-sized aspirations. In “Handwritten,” the follow-up to its 2010 breakthrough-that-wasn’t “American Slang,” Gaslight Anthem finally have an album to match their ambitions.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/2012/07/23/gJQAybfS5W_story.html

If anyone has already posted this, sorry!

The Guardian:

The review section has a big photo of the guys on the front with the genius and not at all cliched caption: "Gaslight Anthem: Can they step out of the shadows of their heroes."

3 stars.

The Gaslight Anthem's major label debut takes them further away from their independent "punk Springsteen" roots into Boss sized would-be stadium rock with a nod to Celtic-influenced Brit rockers Big Country and the Alarm. The songs wear broken hearts on checked sleeves, with a "whoah-ah" or "hey-ey-ey" never far away. Opener 45, the stirring Biloxi Parish and the title track are instantly catchy; It's hard to hear them without imagining rows of arms pumping the air. And yet, the album often lumbers where it should be nimble. As ever, sandpaper-voiced Brian Fallon documents death and driving, always with the radio playing, which won't harm their appeal to US FM stations. He sounds as sincere as ever but0 the cliches become self parody at times. "Desire, desire" is rhymed with "fire, fire," Girls have "Bette Davis" or "faraway" eyes and even the lovely, acoustic National Anthem can't resist John Lennon;s line, "Whatever gets you through the night." Thus, their forth album never steps out the shadows of their heroes and may not take them where they want to go.

This annoyed me quite a bit, not because it's a bad review, I couldn't care less about that. People think what they want. My friend wants to marry Justin Bieber for goodness sake. But because "sandpaper-voiced" and "lumbers where it should be nimble" are pretty big cliches. The guy doing the review gives Brian stick for using cliches (He does, but quite effectively in my opinion) when he does too (Badly in my opinion). Plus, the Guardian review of KOKO said that "Fallon jumped of the speaker and into the audience", so I don't take much notice of that paper anyway.

AGoodTime wrote:

"Girls have "Bette Davis" or "faraway" eyes (...)"

there's no girl with "faraway" eyes, they're Brian's eyes no wonder Brian doesn't like the magazines

Bea wrote:

AGoodTime wrote:

"Girls have "Bette Davis" or "faraway" eyes (...)"

there's no girl with "faraway" eyes, they're Brian's eyes no wonder Brian doesn't like the magazines

I thought that when I read it the first time! I was gunna point that out but thought I'd ranted enough.

Lincoln, NE Journal Star

Grade: A

"The best rock record of 2012, and it very well still could be at the top of the heap come December...It remains to be seen whether “Handwritten” will attract the larger audience The Gaslight Anthem deserves. No matter what happens, they’ve made a fine rock record -- an increasingly rare occurrence these days."

Grantland, the ESPN sports/culture website: ouch

Very Hungry Hearts
The Gaslight Anthem's Bruce Springsteen problem comes to a head on Handwritten


Pop music, like college or a quasi-religious hippie death cult, is where people go to become themselves. Pop can be an avenue for reinvention. That's what it was for Lizzy Grant, a folk singer from Lake Placid who stepped behind a curtain and reemerged as an undead '50s sex bomb in star-spangled undies named Lana Del Rey. It also runs in the opposite direction, where Frank Ocean living his life in an open and transparent fashion can be a cultural statement that elevates his art. Or pop might simply be a forum for figuring these things out one way or the other. In Usher's words, countless pop songs boil down to a simple theme: "looking 4 myself."

In the parlance of this year's pop music identity questers, Brian Fallon of New Jersey heartland arena punk quartet The Gaslight Anthem started out as an Usher, tried to pass himself off as a Frank Ocean, but — on his band's new album, Handwritten — ended up as a Lana Del Rey. If you care at all about this guy as a songwriter and potential standard-bearer, this is a pretty disappointing development. For a brief period, Fallon wrote better than anyone in rock about how songs can map out the geography of your heart if you squeeze them down deep enough. His own songs were frequently good and often great, but what really made them burn and sparkle was their embedded promise for something really outstanding on the horizon, beyond the hero worship. That hasn't happened with Handwritten, and there are troubling signs that Fallon's skills have stunted and even atrophied. His songs have come to embody identity issues they once merely documented.

Let's state the obvious: Brian Fallon Single White Female–izes the hell out of Bruce Springsteen, sometimes to the point of anachronism, and even if you like the guy's music (and I do) this has finally become impossible to reconcile on Handwritten. Now inevitably paired with Brendan O'Brien, Bruce's record producer from 2002 to 2009, Fallon has made Handwritten a lurching, boilerplate slab of meat-and-potatoes jutted-jaw rock. The few remaining links to Gaslight's punk roots have been forcibly removed and replaced by Hammond organs and "sha-la-la" sing-alongs. And, sweet Jesus, does it drag at times. One track, a particularly phlegmy number called "Too Much Blood," the best of three consecutive mid-tempo songs that drag down Handwritten's interminable middle section, sounds like Rick Rubin doing one of his career rehab jobs on John Cafferty.

Handwritten isn't bad musically, exactly. Fallon is too talented a craftsman of outsize rock songs for that to be true. (He did put "anthem" right in the name of his band, which isn't empty boasting.) The album's lead single, "45," is disappointingly non-representative of Handwritten's main ingredients, but it's still the best song here, kicking off the record like a recommissioned family Taurus peeling out of a suburban cul-de-sac past curfew. "Here Comes My Man" is the record's chewiest Springsteen bite, but it's also pretty fantastic, with a chiming guitar hook and bombastic drumbeat that O'Brien gives some of that old Magic sheen. Even some of the colorless, boring songs, like "Biloxi Parish," which cross-engineers soaring U2 guitar with fat "Mutt" Lange banshee rhythms, are occasionally rousing in a Pavlovian, fireworks-on-the-Fourth-of-July sense.

The problem with Handwritten is that it seems just a little bit phony, which is probably worse than being bad, because Fallon has a lot invested in the "honesty" of his music. (In "Too Much Blood," he worries that he's actually being too honest, because that's the kind of man we're dealing with here.) When Fallon sings, yet again, about feeling big feelings while flippin' around the radio dial, like he does in "Mae" and the zippy title track, it fails the bullshit test. Sorry, dude, but you grew up during one of the worst eras for rock radio ever. There's no way you romanced Mary or Betty back in the late '90s to the dulcet sounds of Mudvayne. It's more likely you fell in love with Mackenzie or Taylor while downloading a torrent of Rancid albums.

As Japandroids showed just last month, there's still juice left in rock's bygone fantasyland, where legs wrap around velvet rims with nary a titter. But you only get to revisit that well so many times. Fallon got his fill four years ago on The Gaslight Anthem's excellent second album, 2008's The '59 Sound. "I always kinda sorta wish I was someone else," Fallon sang in the album's best song, "High Lonesome," and he kinda sorta came close to being that special someone on the rest of the record. Though he was a relatively mature 28, and sang in a manly rock-guy croon that purred like a Harley in heat pumped full of motor oil and Budweiser, Fallon's lyrics made him seem much younger. He was a dreamer with a head filled with "classic cars and outlaw cowboy bands." He repeatedly referenced songs by Springsteen, Tom Petty, and — most tellingly — the terminally unfashionable alt-era roots rock outfit Counting Crows, which had broken out in similar fashion 15 years earlier by leaning on classic rock posturing and openly fantasizing about being someone "just a little more funky."

On The '59 Sound, Fallon's Walter Mitty–esque tendencies were forgivable. He was clearly a fan, and as fans do, he was draping himself in his record collection as a kind of shield against insecurity over an unformed sense of self. This fandom filled the space where Fallon's personality was supposed to be, and it more or less worked. Fallon wore those lyrical nods to rock giants as studiously as the black leather jacket he donned on the album's cover, like he was trying to absorb them into a permanent new exoskeleton. In Fallon's mind, he was probably trying to be "real" by adopting well-worn signifiers of realness, but it was his naïve lack of realness that was touching. That is, unless you're the sort of person who's never tried to dress up like a record jacket photo.

The '59 Sound was a transitional record for The Gaslight Anthem. When I saw the band play live in 2009, in front of one of those huge, Warped Tour–style band-name banners, the audience was a mix of 16-year-olds and middle-aged true believers between Hold Steady gigs. The kids were there for the furiously uplifting and energetic tunes that Fallon wrote to accompany the soiled-bandanna white-guy rock fantasies that had seduced the oldsters in the house. I imagine those 16-year-olds were mostly bored by 2010's American Slang, where Fallon allowed all the Springsteen comparisons that followed in The '59 Sound's wake to completely overtake his band's aesthetic. Suddenly, bar-band soul and '50s rock crashed the party. The pacing turned ponderous. Most alarmingly, Fallon's voice appeared to age about 30 years. His weathered, bowels-torturing affectations were already distracting enough in his lead vocals, but he made sure to overdub more of them in the background, creating his own Greek chorus of pseudo-Bosses.

On Handwritten, Fallon has gone full-on craggy. But he's forgotten to emulate the one thing about Springsteen that makes him Springsteen and not Bryan Adams or the "Life Is a Highway" guy: specificity. Springsteen's songs take place in a mythical, unreal New Jersey, but it's his New Jersey, and he has the details both lyrical and spiritual — from the horsepower of the hero's car engine to the untimely pregnancy that ruined his girl's life — to put you right in that world with him, riding shotgun. Fallon's songs are composed of scraps from Bruce's junkyard. They sound secondhand, no matter how vigorously Fallon grunts to the contrary.

The time has come for Fallon to stake out his own territory, and he moves in that direction on Handwritten's final track, "National Anthem." Over some spare, mythic acoustic chords, Fallon sings about how he will never forget "my American love." Specifics still elude him, but at least he's dropped the bluster. What's left is the longing. "I already live with too many ghosts," he sings. The first step to solving a problem is admitting you have one.

Ouch indeed!
Springsteen-compare much?