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The Gaslight Anthem: Handwritten

Andrew Mueller, Uncut, August 2012

WHEN THE GASLIGHT ANTHEM's Brian Fallon last spoke to Uncut, as he drove home to New Jersey from Nashville after finishing work on Handwritten, he promised that the new album would sound like "Tom Petty songs played by Pearl Jam or Foo Fighters". This was both a surprise and a relief. A few months previously, Fallon had been heard muttering that he was "just bored" with what he'd been doing, and "didn't want to write any more rock'n'roll songs" — an ennui that resulted in the establishment of a side project, The Horrible Crowes, to explore a budding interest in balladry. On the deafening evidence of Handwritten, he has exorcised whatever angst was plaguing him.

Total word count of piece: 835

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