Our team nearly comes to blows over The Gaslight Anthem’s Get Hurt

The Gaslight Anthem (photo: Pamela Littky)

This time around in Album Club we took a collective look at New Jersey rock/punk quartet The Gaslight Anthem‘s recently released album, Get Hurt. Our first real rock offering in the club, the newest Gaslight had a polarizing affect on the team. In fact, it’s a good thing we are such good friends around the Rice and Bread offices, because things got a little heated. Don’t worry, we didn’t “get hurt.” Well, not badly, anyway.

The Album Club:
Jason Schreurs, Rice and Bread Magazine
Megan Cole, Rice and Bread Magazine
Greg Pratt, Rice and Bread Magazine contributor
Blake Morneau, Rice and Bread Magazine contributor

The album: The Gaslight Anthem’s Get Hurt

Jason: Where do we start with this album? We already know we have a huge fan in the house…

Greg: Hey.

Jason: We’ve got at least one hater [Megan], so maybe Blake and I should start, since we already know who the lovers and the haters are in this conversation.

Blake: I was really looking forward to some guitar music after being at Shambhala for the past week, and this album ruined my day so badly yesterday. Just… why? Why? Why? I’ve seen their name around, The Gaslight Anthem, and have never listened to them, so I was excited about the prospect of listening to a band a lot of people seem to like. But this record has nothing for me; there’s nothing that I like about it.

Jason: Wow.

Greg: Interesting.

Jason: Okay, I’ll go next, as I feel like I’m a bit more on the fence. I think this album is pretty horrible in the scheme of The Gaslight Anthem. It’s gotten to the point now where I can’t even listen to it; I’ll go back and listen to the older albums instead, just because they’re better. But there is some catchy stuff on here, and some songs that keep grabbing me. I’ve been singing some of these stupid songs in my head, which means something. I do like to substitute the words “get hurt” with “butt hurt,” because the whole album is him being butt hurt about his divorce. So I’m definitely saying it’s a bad album in the band’s catalog, but there’s something about it that makes me want to keep listening… and it’s killing me.

Greg: Why do you think it’s bad, Jason?

Jason: There’s just so much being thrown in to the pot on this one. They were a pretty solid, rocking punk group for a few albums there, and this new one just seems like they’re throwing whatever they can into the mix to see what sticks. They’re dealing with a bigger producer, the guy who produced Arctic Monkeys and The 1975 and bands like that, so their might have been some ideas tossed around in the studio, but it just seems like they’re trying too hard and that really bothers me, especially when certain songs remind me of U2 or other huge bands. It seems like they’re really stretching on this one.

Greg: I really don’t think so, and I’m clearly the token Gaslight fan here. I was bracing myself, because I know the band was talking before the album came out about how it was going to be different, and people were going to be shocked and all of this stuff. But, come on, it’s a Gaslight Anthem album. It sounds pretty identical to the last two albums. There are a couple of songs that are a bit mellow and more atmospheric; kind of the U2 thing you were speaking of, Jason, with the guitar tones. But, pound for pound, I don’t really buy the talk of it sounding different. It sounds pretty similar to their previous stuff.

Megan: I felt like the name of the album was a promise, because it was physically painful for me to listen to it. I felt like I had to force myself to listen and I made it about halfway through the album the other day and I just couldn’t listen to any more of it. Then this morning I listened to it again, and I found myself getting angry. I find it offensive. I find there’s nothing original on this album. I find that the lyrics are cheesy and forced. I just think it’s a terrible album. And the fact that they keep getting compared to Bruce Springsteen, it makes me want to hurt someone [coughs].

Jason: She’s choking over here.

Blake: Choking with rage.

Megan: And I feel like he’s still trying to do a Springsteen thing with some of these lyrics, but he’s just missing the mark.

Greg: First of all, Megan, were you ever a Gaslight fan, or have you always been a hater?

Megan: I have to admit, this is my first real Gaslight experience, so…

Jason: For me, I just put on their new albums when they come out, listen to them a few times, think it’s decent, then I move on. I’ve never been a real fan of the band, seen them live, but they’ve never really grabbed me like similar bands do; bands like Alkaline Trio and Against Me! that are kind of in the same ballpark.

Greg: I heard them for the first time not that long ago. Jason, you introduced me to them when you put on American Slang one fateful day in the office and I was totally hooked. They became one of the few punk rock bands that I’ve heard in the past five years or so that I really connected with, and I went out and bought the old albums and listened to them constantly. They’re a band I really love and really got into. There isn’t one point on this new album where I think there’s a lot of Springsteen influence. I don’t hear it at all on this album. I heard it a lot in the past on their albums, lyrically, especially. And I’m a huge Bruce Springsteen fan, like you Megan. I love Bruce; I mean, my kid’s middle name is Bruce, so I’m totally a diehard fucking Bruce fan! But the difference is that it offends you, Megan, whereas I just see it as this guy in Gaslight is obviously a big Bruce fan, too, and he’s just paying homage to him. Having said that, there were no points on this album where I thought, “This is totally Springsteen.”

Megan: There was only really one song on it that I found it was overt, and that was the last song on the album. It came on and it just seemed like he was trying to rip off some of the lyrics, or put that forced pain into it. When I hear a Springsteen song, the lyrics are authentic, but this guy, it’s like, “What would happen if I drove my car into the sea” or whatever. It’s like, “Okay, you’re going through a breakup like everyone else, and you want to drive your car into the sea?” I didn’t buy it. It lacked the emotion of a really good album and just seemed forced. It’s like, “I’m going through a divorce and I need to write an album about it and weave together a bunch of cheesy metaphors and other bullshit.”

Greg: Sure, sure. I’ll be frank, I don’t really go to rock music for the lyrics, usually. I mean, 90 percent of the rock music I listen to has shitty lyrics… 95 percent… 99 percent… it all does! [Laughs] There’s hardly any good lyricists out there. I actually don’t mind this guy’s lyrics, as far as rock lyrics go. They’re a bit cheeseball at times, but, you know, I get into it. I’m walking down the road, listening to my headphones and I’m liking it. I get what you mean, though.

Jason: Okay, we’ve dealt with the Springsteen influence. What about the Nickelback influence?

Blake: Uhhh, it’s just everything I hate about modern rock seems to have been pasted together to make this record.

Jason: Well, that was what a lot of people were joking about, that this was their Nickelback album, or Theory of a Deadman, or whatever modern-rock name you want to throw into the mix of shitty, modern rock. I mean, that first song on the album, you could hear it on the radio and think it was Nickelback…

Greg: The first song kind of sucks and a pretty weak way to open the album.

Blake: I thought the whole album couldn’t get more boring, and at no point was I excited about any of it. The title track… do you guys remember the movie School of Rock? It sounds like the band that kicked Jack Black out.

Jason: Blake, if you had to pick a favourite song on this album, did anything stand out?

Blake: Um, I do like the slinky, sort of disco guitar riffs at the start of “Stray Paper.” That songs falls apart pretty quickly for me, but I do like some of the guitar work in there.

Jason: Hang on, let’s put it on [puts on beginning of song]… oh yeah, that one. You know what I don’t like about this song though?

Megan: The Bono vocals?

Jason: It almost sounds like he’s straining to sing it [makes strained singing noise]. Because his normal voice is decent, but his strained, “I’m getting emo” voice is just the worst.

Blake: That tone you’re talking about kind of reminded me of [ex-Skid Row singer] Sebastian Bach trying to impersonate Springsteen.

Greg: Hey, that sounds fucking awesome. That sounds great! [Laughs] I think we’re coming at this from two very different places, my friend.

Jason: That’s interesting, because I was reading a whole bunch of reviews of the album yesterday and a couple of them compared the album to glam rock and said there were songs on here that sounded like Bon Jovi. I think Skid Row came up as well. But other people were saying that’s just the lazy way to say something sucks. But, I hear all kinds of things on this album; that’s part of the problem, that I don’t really hear Gaslight Anthem. I hear U2 and hear some glam rock bands, and I hear some Springsteen, of course, and I hear modern rock and other things, and at this point in their career, rather than trying to stretch in different directions and be commercially successful, they should just be finding themselves.

Greg: I don’t think they are trying to be commercially successful; they’re doing the opposite of what you just said. I think they’re just doing what they want to do. And, again, it’s not that different than the last couple of albums. Everyone’s going a bit too far with that. If take maybe two or three of the quieter songs off this album, it sounds almost identical to American Slang and Handwritten. It’s a Gaslight album. My only problem with the album is the production sound. The guitars sound bad and the drums sound horrible. The songs are amazing and it’s a great album that really does it for me, but the sound of it is not too great for my ears. I would’ve liked to have heard a more raw, natural sound, and that would have been more exciting for me. But that’s the only bad thing I can say about it; it’s a great rock album. If there’s another band doing this kind of straight-up rock and roll better than these guys, I would love to hear them.

Jason: Producer Mike Crossey might be upset at you for those comments.

Greg: I’m sure he knows what he’s doing. I’m just very picky and particular about production, so what I like isn’t always what everyone likes. I would have loved to have heard a production sound like the second The Weakerthans album placed onto this album; where you can hear everything that’s going on. For instance, the snare drum on this album sounds really bad, and that’s a game-changer for me.

The Gaslight Anthem (photo: Drew Gurian)

Blake: I would have loved this album had I come across it in Grade 11. I would have eaten up this album like a tasty pie. But now it’s just out there in the ether, just floating around. It just sounds so generic to me. It really, really does.

Megan: That was my issue with it, too. I’ve never listened to them much before and it was on in the background while I was working and I’d keep noticing, “This sounds like this band. This sounds like that band.” And as someone who was being really exposed to their music, I couldn’t lock in to what The Gaslight Anthem is.

Jason: Maybe we just don’t like divorce albums?

Blake: No, I love divorce albums! Some of my favourite albums are divorce albums. Bob Dylan’s Blood on the Tracks, Money Mark’s Brand New by Tomorrow; there are some great divorce albums out there.

Megan: If you want to hear an emotionally genuine divorce song, may I recommend “Brilliant Disguise” by Bruce Springsteen? [Laughs] It has a hell of a lot more emotion than this stupid album does. There are musicians out there who write more powerful songs that compare to a Springsteen style than what this guy is trying to do.

Jason: But to be fair, he never asked to be compared to Bruce Springsteen. He did bring Bruce up onstage a couple of times to strum along to their songs, which might have been a mistake in retrospect, but he’s not asking for these comparisons, he’s just getting them. In fact, I think he tried to distance himself from the comparisons at one point.

Greg: Imagine what it’s like being compared to Bruce. Going back many albums, Brian Fallon from Gaslight has referenced Bruce in his lyrics, but he’s also referenced Counting Crows and other bands. He’s just a guy who loves rock and roll. He loves Bruce as much as Megan and I probably do, and he happens to be very open about it. A lot of his songs are just about how much he loves rock music, which is great. So Bruce will come up and the comparisons will be made. So it’s hard to listen to it with a clean slate, and you can’t live up that. No one can.

Jason: Let’s wrap this up. What would you guys give this album out of 10. I’d give it a four.

Megan: I think it’s best that I don’t give this album a rating.

Blake: I’d give it a three.

Greg: You guys are… This is out of 10!? This is crazy. This is unbelievable. I would give it a hearty, solid, no-regrets nine out of 10.

Everyone else: Wow! [Laughs]

Greg: I stand behind that rating.

Blake: What a drastic turn of events.

Greg: It is drastic. It’s too bad this conversation wasn’t with a bunch of people who actually liked rock music, then maybe this conversation would have fucking went somewhere! [Laughs]

Blake: I love rock music, but I don’t want my rock music to sound like all of the other rock music. It sounds like something that my stepmom would have playing and she’d say, “Blake, check out this new band!” When I’m getting recommendations from stepmom, things are pretty dire.

Jason: Greg, maybe you’ll end up at a Gaslight concert surrounded by a bunch of middle-aged women and have a grand ol’ time.

Greg: And that’s when the trouble will start.

The Gaslight Anthem‘s Get Hurt is out now on Island Records.