par Mikeb » Mer Avr 04, 2012 3:17 pm
Un article du Uncut de ce mois.
Brian Fallon is in a van when Uncut calls, just leaving Nashville, on his way home to New Jersey. About fourteen hours he reckons, but with two of his band mates sharing the driving, nothing too onerous and nothing The Gaslight Anthem haven't endured umpteen variations on before.
The band have spent five weeks at Nashville's Blackbird Studio, recording Handwritten, their fourth LP- and first for new label Mercury. It is produced by Brendan O'Brien, producer of a run of 21st century LPs for Bruce Springsteen. It will not, evidently, mark the point at which the Anthem distance themselves from their inspiration and mentor.
"Yeah," says Fallon. "I did think of that, that everyone's gonna bring up the Bruce thing again, but I've always said let's just do what works. And who better to make it sound like us and not like Bruce than the guy who did Bruce? He knows all of Bruce's tricks, right? And anyway, he said he didn't think we sounded like Bruce."
Really? "Yeah I said 'Really?', too" laughs Fallon. "But it's a much heavier sound than before. It's a real guitar rock record, loud and heavy. We normally have kind of jangly indie guitars, and it's not like that. If I have to compare it to anything, it sounds like Tom Petty songs played by Pearl Jam or Foo Fighters."
This is something of a surprise. Last summer, while promoting the debut LP The Horrible Crowes- a side project he established with Gaslight Anthem roadie Ian Perkins- Fallon told New York Magazine he was just bored and didn't want to write any more rock 'n' roll songs.
"Which was true at the time," he says. “So I immersed myself in non-rock 'n' roll things, did that acoustic Revival Tour in Europe [with Dan Andriano, Chuck Ragan and Dave Hause]. After six weeks of that there's nothing you want to hear more than a Marshall stack turned all the way up."
Fallon reveals Handwritten will contain 11 tracks, and parts with the titles of three- 'Here Comes My Man', '45' and 'Handwritten'. For all that Fallon suggests it's a raucous rock 'n' roll, he admits he learnt from the more measured approach taken on the Horrible Crowes' (terrific) album, Elsie. "That really affected how I was writing," he explains. "The reason for the title of Handwritten is that everything was written almost as journals- the songs are real stories about my life and things that my friends have gone through. I just trimmed all the fat, made it as direct as it could be.
Fallon refers, with heartening guilessness, to Bruce's progression from the impressionistic lyrical jumbles of Greetings From Asbury Park, to the more straight forward writing in his later work. "He's helped deal with the changes as they come," says Fallon. "He's good at reminding you it's only a rock 'n' roll band. Even if you get rich, it's just a house, it's just a car, you're just a guy."
Fallon has shared the stage with Bruce more than once, most famously at Hyde Park in 2010. Did that endless sea of faces not look at all daunting from behind the microphone? "I'll take it," say Fallon. "I want it. I'm still a kid in a candy store with this stuff."
1996 London- Zurich
2000 Zurich - London
2006 Bern
2010 Berlin
2014 Berlin
2018 Barcelona - Seattle
