2/17/2023 0 Comments 93.1 da paina songs“45”ĭespite being a full-blown music nerd, the number 45 always makes me think of a gun instead of a record. And even though The Gaslight Anthem’s “45” is, of course, referring to a wax-laid single (we never find out which song), it still reminds me of a weapon. There’s an emotional disease that Czech author Milan Kundera touches on in his novel Life Is Elsewhere, in which the sufferer always feels one or two steps away from where all the action is. Even before that anxiety was given a social media-friendly name (“FOMO” or “Fear of Missing Out”), it was at the core of what The Gaslight Anthem are all about. Written in the wake of Joe Strummer’s death in late 2002, “I’da Called You Woody, Joe” is as much a tribute to Strummer and The Clash as it is a symptom of Fallon’s “life is elsewhere” outlook. The lyrics describe Fallon’s first encounter with “the sound from Camden town” and how he gradually came to see that sound as a way to escape his suffocating Jersey adolescence (in a moment that’s a touch literal and a touch figurative, the walls of his bedroom actually tremble around him). The song’s title also contains a coded reference to Woody Guthrie, whose own biggest fan, Bob Dylan, was also a personal friend. Fallon arrived too late to the game to befriend his idol, but that doesn’t make him any less of an heir. “American Slang”īrian Fallons sings extensively about the mythos of Americana, this dream of a world populated by hardworking roughs and the ethereal women who can capture their heart. While he often presents it all with a strong sense of nostalgia - as if this was an actually obtainable reality - the title track to American Slang acknowledges head-on the storybook nature of the majority of The Gaslight Anthem’s lyrical content. Fallon makes it clear from the opening verse, however, that they’re fully aware that the “American Dream” as sold to generations of hopefuls is a fallacy: “Look what you started/ I seem to be coming out of my skin/ And look what you’ve forgotten here/ The bandages just don’t keep me in.” With the almost spectral “oohs” of the chorus broken with the distorted howling of, “In a dream I had/ Oh, in a dream I had,” it sounds like the band is still clinging to their own (or, sure, Springsteen’s) fantasies.
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