Brian Fallon doesn't seem like the kind of guy who does a lot of texting. No LOLs or emoticons for him, no clever abbreviations. "Every word handwritten," he emphasizes on the Gaslight Anthem's fourth album, which is actually titled Handwritten. And no fancy electric lamps for Fallon: "We only write by the light of the moon." He's a defiantly old-school type-- he'd probably be a Luddite if not for electric guitars-- and the Gaslight Anthem get most of their moves from the 1950s and 1960s: girl groups, greasers, juvenile delinquents, rockabilly tough guys, and a certain gun-wielding super-producer. On the band's 2008 breakout album, The '59 Sound, they turned these touchstones into heart-on-sleeve rock anthems meant to define a community of close confidantes, frayed lovers, and rock heroes, old friends long gone ("ain't supposed to die on a Saturday night"), and women with high-top sneakers and sailor tattoos. It sounded like a cry from a scene defining itself from the rubble of pop history, and there was no small power in their sound, which thrived on the past but resigned itself to live in the present.
Four years, two albums, and one side project later, Fallon has begun to use those same influences toward more personal ends: Rather than define himself as part of a group, he has been defining himself against the world, portraying himself-- and the characters in whose voices he often writes and sings-- as defiantly, proudly, grumpily out of time. You text, but he writes longhand. You put your iPod on shuffle, but he spins 45s (and "45" is actually the title of the new album's lead-off track). That self-determining sensibility has motivated scores of artists going back well beyond the Gaslight Anthem's frame of reference, but Fallon seems to be growing more self-righteous about it, the punk as curmudgeon. Worse, on Handwritten he sounds content to let some of his references do the heavy lifting, whether it's Ginsberg ("Howl") or Van Morrison (the grave sha-la-las on "Here Comes My Man"). If in the past he managed to transform similar icons into a communal mythology, here it too often sounds like regurgitation, as though the reference were an end in itself.
It might be more bearable if Fallon showed more of a sense of humor in his songwriting or had a vocal setting other than intense, but at the very least he's a hard romantic, which in this case can excuse a lot. He believes wholeheartedly in girl-group infallibility and in the profound wisdom of pop songwriting, so he's never afraid to come off as sentimental or mushy. It's endearing how he mistakes smog for "the mists of Mulholland" and impressive how he can sell a clunker like "I'm in love with the way you're in love with the moonlight." That may be the saving grace of Handwritten, too much of which seems to be addressed to women who are doing something wrong, who are emotionally careless. Rather than confessional, Fallon's songwriting is recriminative, constantly assessing responsibility and often painting himself as a messianic romeo. Midway through Handwritten, he sings, "Who came to wipe all your tears away? Who came to give you back your dignity, babe?" The answer is easy to guess, but it's such a loaded, ugly moment that it's tempting to take the needle off the record, take a breather, get some space.
But make sure to come back, just so you don't miss the whoa-oa-oas on "Desire", an effortlessly enormous chorus that give Fallon's philosophical more import than they earn. And if the acoustic "National Anthem" closes things out on a downer note, the penultimate track "Mae" churns up a noir-ish rock-and-roll drama as Fallon and his ladyfriend drive around the city and "wait for kingdom come... with the radio on." It's no anthem, more like a muted lament with a bleak-yet-hopeful ambience, and it points directly to the Gaslight Anthem's saving grace: No matter their flaws, they know that redemption lies somewhere on the dial, in an old tune we can all sing along to.
