'Get Hurt' - the new Gaslight Anthem album (advance discussion) [out 11/12 August]

Solid interview. (And a July Talk interview on the sidebar! Listen to them!)

They're doing a pretty good job at keeping this thing from leaking.
I'm ready to hear it. When do you guys think preorders will start to ship? Hopefully we get it early.

They completely prevented a leak of "Handwritten" if I remember correctly. We got a stream the Tuesday before, and obviously rips of that came out but I don't think the album ever technically leaked. I know because I waited to listen until a higher quality came out and that didn't happen till the album was released in another country the Friday before the American release date.

Yea Handwritten never leaked, as you mentioned just rips of the NPR stream a week before. A far cry from the last couple of S1D releases like American Slang and iTunes Session which all dropped significantly early

Don't forget The '59 Sound which leaked months and months beforehand.

The audio for Stay Vicious is available on the official Facebook page now. I've not listened to it yet.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K2edphSNRPY

EDIT - And NOW i've seen the thread.  

When they changed the website they changed the "About" page. Here is what it now reads:

http://www.thegaslightanthem.com/about/

The Gaslight Anthem has always been hard; with GET HURT, the New Jersey-based rock ‘n’ roll band get heavy. Since coming together in 2007, the band has joyfully injected aspects of rock’s most universal languages – arena rock and barroom blues, folk and pure pop – into punk’s round hole, ultimately forging its own powerful, populist sound. 2012’s HANDWRITTEN proved the apogee for The Gaslight Anthem’s anthemic approach, scoring top 10 chart debuts in eight countries around the globe. Having climbed the mountaintop, the band has chosen to push their music farther than ever before, not via extra instrumentation or expanded arrangements, but by blowing up the template from stem to stern. Massive melodies and shout-to-the-top choruses are still well in hand, but songs like “1,000 Years” and the searing title track draw on grunge and symphonic pop, soul and psychedelia, all shot through with limitless ambition, experimental energy, and collectivist spirit.



“It wasn’t exactly clear when we started what we were going to do,” says singer/guitarist Brian Fallon. “We just knew we had to change it up in order to maintain being a relevant band to ourselves. There really wasn’t anything else to say or do on those avenues that we had already walked on.”



Having recorded HANDWRITTEN with producer Brendan O’Brien (Pearl Jam, Bruce Springsteen), the band chose a less likely collaborator in Mike Crossey. In April 2014, Gaslight Anthem and the Irish-born producer – known for his work with Arctic Monkeys, Jake Bugg, and The 1975, among others – convened at Nashville’s Blackbird Studios. From the jump, the band’s M.O. was to “just try everything,” says Fallon. “Nothing was off limits, nothing was off the table. Everything was fair game.”



Fallon suggests the sessions first bore unanticipated fruit with the album-opening “Stay Vicious.” Rolling drums tumble into a gargantuan neo-metallic stomp, an instantly transformative riff that hearkens the alternative rock that soundtracked the band’s coming of age. Suffice to say, “Stay Vicious” blasted the Gaslight Anthem’s creative door off its hinges.



“We’ve never done anything like that before,” Fallon says. “I thought Mike was going to think I went off the deep end. But he told me this is great, keep going like this. That sort of freed me up to go and try everything else.”



With songs “all coming from different places than we’d ever come from before,” the Gaslight Anthem reexamined and honed its own instincts and methodology. Electronic instruments and computer technology were used for the first time in their history, adding unexpected rhythmic flux to Alex Levine and Benny Horowitz’s indefatigable engine room. Long inspired by post punk adventurism, Alex Rosamila’s guitars are textured and harmonized; noisy and stuttering on tracks like “Rollin’ and Tumblin’” and the closing “Dark Places.” Up front, Fallon sought a vocal sound to match the musical unrest, layering his trademark shout with processed harmonies and a wracked roar he joking likens to “trying to sing like a lady in the 60s.”



“I was just trying anything,” he says. “I didn’t feel locked into that same low baritone.”



To be clear: The Gaslight Anthem of GET HURT is the same band that first broke out worldwide with 2008’s THE ’59 SOUND, only with greater range, skill, and yes, maturity. For all their amplified muscle and intricacy, songs like “Get Hurt” and the haunting “Break Your Heart” reveal a finely limned subtlety, etched in hitherto untouched shades of sonic grey.



“To start a song quietly and just let it breathe for a minute,” says Fallon, “those things were difficult to do. We were trying to let the soft moments be soft. Everybody needs a break, even on a record.”



Fallon took a parallel approach towards his lyrics, exploring more abstract and oblique narrative paths to better express his own emotional truth. The expanded depth of field sees his always vibrant, character-based storytelling colored by increasingly complex use of language and stream of consciousness spontaneity.



“It was a real working out process,” he says. “I just said, I’m going to write what I think and what I’m dealing with at this moment. I don’t know if it’s the truth or if this feeling is going to last, but I’m just going to let it out. I just let it go. That’s what was happening, that was real.”



“Stray Paper” – which features impassioned backing vocals from the one and only Sharon Jones – provides what is perhaps the album’s most transcendent moment, its intricately orchestrated hooks and modernist dynamics unlike anything in The Gaslight Anthem’s remarkable canon. Rich with imagery and metaphorical flight, the song’s magic realism proved a revelatory mind blower for its creator.



“I had never written from that point of view,” Fallon says. “With ‘Stray Paper’ I feel that I touched something that I‘d like to continue through the rest of my career. I would like to continue down that path and find out what else is there.”



The Gaslight Anthem faced a dilemma that has confronted many bands in a similar position – how to keep on growing while holding true to the initial vision that has earned them a legion of fervent fans around the world. Their response is audacious, energized and enduring. GET HURT might be defiantly transitional but at its heart, the Gaslight Anthem’s song remains the same.



“You can never lose who you are,” Fallon says. “No matter how much you change, you can never lose that core of what makes you you. If you’re honest with yourself, that core remains. You don’t find yourself lost in some genre you have no business being in – you create your own.”

Not sure about the reason but they took "Rollin' "off their channel

“You can never lose who you are,” Fallon says. “No matter how much you change, you can never lose that core of what makes you you. If you’re honest with yourself, that core remains. You don’t find yourself lost in some genre you have no business being in – you create your own.”

Let's hope they never lose that.

Again, this just made me want to listen to this record more and more.

Ugh I wish they would stop releasing this album bit by bit and just stream it already!    I'm holding out on Stay Vicious because I hated it when I knew half of Handwritten before I could listen to it straight through and 2 songs is already too many.

itunes is trying to sabotage me though because it automatically downloaded the song to my phone   .

To reiterate what others are saying about this album so far, I too find it strange that they've released three songs before the album has come out. Unfortunately, I feel as though they have only release one good song out of the three (Get Hurt).  I'm really hoping that the rest of the album includes a few unexpected gems like "Mae" was on "Handwritten".  RnT for me is completely forgettable, much like "45".  And I'm not sure what "Stay Vicious" is supposed to be, but I feel like they need to give half of the writing credits for this song to The National. It was one thing when Brian would borrow a lyric here or there, but half of this song sounds like it could've been on Boxer.

One interesting thing from the absolutepunk podcast - the song "Selected Poems" has a line "all i seem to find is everything has chains" or something like that. "Everything has chains" is a line from Corduroy by Pearl Jam. I guess Brian isn't done with references after all.

StitchesOnTheRadio wrote:

Ugh I wish they would stop releasing this album bit by bit and just stream it already!    I'm holding out on Stay Vicious because I hated it when I knew half of Handwritten before I could listen to it straight through and 2 songs is already too many.

itunes is trying to sabotage me though because it automatically downloaded the song to my phone   .

I'd say get ready for things to stay this way. It feels like the new mode of album promotion in the Spotify era: slowly release a few tracks ahead of time and build hype that way rather than through the old method of radio play for a single and/or a music video. A bunch of artists have been doing this over the past year or so (currently Jenny Lewis and Owl John are two other good examples) and, if it's a successful strategy for album promotion (which I'm pretty sure it will be), it's going to become more and more commonplace.

eagles1139 wrote:

One interesting thing from the absolutepunk podcast - the song "Selected Poems" has a line "all i seem to find is everything has chains" or something like that. "Everything has chains" is a line from Corduroy by Pearl Jam. I guess Brian isn't done with references after all.

could also be a reference to the 59 sound "chains i've been hearing now for most of my life" but i might be reaching too much

poormrpitiful wrote:

eagles1139 wrote:

One interesting thing from the absolutepunk podcast - the song "Selected Poems" has a line "all i seem to find is everything has chains" or something like that. "Everything has chains" is a line from Corduroy by Pearl Jam. I guess Brian isn't done with references after all.

could also be a reference to the 59 sound "chains i've been hearing now for most of my life" but i might be reaching too much

maybe...but for it to be worded exactly like it is in the Pearl Jam song, when Pearl Jam is one of Brian's favorite bands, is moe than coincidental.

For those who haven't yet seen it, Amazon UK is running a competition. The winner, plus a guest, get return flights to NJ, 2 nights in a hotel, tickets to the 13 September gig, and get to meet the band. Link below.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/feature.html?ie=UTF8&docId=1000816633

I actually think releasing songs beforehand can hurt more than help. I know I've cancelled a pre-order or 2 in the past based on those early songs.

i am stoked on this album. at first listen of rollin and tumblin, i was turned off because of the riff but it grew on me and now i love the song. I was hoping it would leak by now so I can listen to it over and over this weekend while driving up to Maine but doesnt look like it will.

what i like about TGA is that they dont mind trying new directions with the band. but i dont like about TGA is that they try new directions with each new album. in my mind, i wish every song sounded like Great Expectations.

I hope this album is great. But i am such a fanboy that i will like this no matter what.

I'm starting to have doubts about the upcoming live shows. For far, this album sounds even more polished than Handwritten, I'm not sure it's going to translate very well live. They've always had problems with their live sound, I believe it was the main reason they gave for not releasing the Terminal 5 shows on DVD like they planned. And it might have been a factor on the short set they put on the DVD that *was* released.

cdala wrote:

I'm starting to have doubts about the upcoming live shows. For far, this album sounds even more polished than Handwritten, I'm not sure it's going to translate very well live. They've always had problems with their live sound, I believe it was the main reason they gave for not releasing the Terminal 5 shows on DVD like they planned. And it might have been a factor on the short set they put on the DVD that *was* released.

More polished than Handwritten? I definitely disagree. Handwritten had a lot of polished vocals that sounded good on the record but Brian was unable to hit those high notes live. "Stay Vicious" and "Rollin and Tumblin" have much grittier vocals IMO and are more in Brian's wheelhouse.

The vocals are grittier but not more raw imo, they have been put through some effect or other.
But I was talking just about the sound in general. More tiny sounds and tricks. Reminds me a bit of American Slang and how you notice so many layered details if you listen to it with good headphones. They don't play much of AS live though.

cdala wrote:

I actually think releasing songs beforehand can hurt more than help. I know I've cancelled a pre-order or 2 in the past based on those early songs.

It's not like they've been playing any of these songs live for a long time. It's all fresh material (the 3 songs) and they are quite different. I love the idea of getting multiple songs out. When the band is talking about a weird album and different approach, you don't want to scare people off. It's more if you like any of these, there's more you'll like on the album. I'd say for me Get Hurt, is my favourite, but Rollin and Tumblin has really stuck with me. Lots of plays on both. Stay Vicious is a little jarring at first a la Blue Dahlia for me, but the more familiar you are for the changes in the song the more you love it. Haven't listened to it too much, but even after the 5 or so listens i find my self anticipating the sha la la parts.

If you think 3 is too many you have the choice not to listen. There are 16 new songs though counting b sides. Plus we've had Halloween for a while.

cdala wrote:

They don't play much of AS live though.

IIRC, in my four times seeing TGA live, the only American Slang songs I have not heard are Orphans, Spirit of Jazz, and Stay Lucky. I may have lucked out but I have heard it played fairly regularly.

And hell yes, I'm so pumped for a QUALITY version of Halloween. I wonder if they mixed it up at all?

I really hope they recorded a quality version of Halloween too. That song deserved a proper recording.

Mike_Millburys_Shoe wrote:

cdala wrote:

They don't play much of AS live though.

IIRC, in my four times seeing TGA live, the only American Slang songs I have not heard are Orphans, Spirit of Jazz, and Stay Lucky. I may have lucked out but I have heard it played fairly regularly.

And hell yes, I'm so pumped for a QUALITY version of Halloween. I wonder if they mixed it up at all?

Maybe it's all about timing, because in 8 shows I went to they only played 6 of the 10 AS songs. I think it averages out at 2-3 AS songs on a 22-25 song setlist. The only ones they consistently play are AS and Diamond Church Street Choir.