When the title track fails to hold the line on Toto-style power balladry, you wish they were honest with themselves and hired Mutt Lange instead. 99% of all Gaslight Anthem reviews fail to mention any other member besides Fallon, and it’s just as well thanks to Mike Crossey’s atypically expensive-with-broke-taste production, Fallon might as well be emoting in front of a House of Blues version of Chuck E. The problem is that The '59 Sound’s still-pretty-awesome Eddie and the Cruisers mall-punk shtick is the only thing that comes naturally to the Gaslight Anthem, and while Get Hurt finds them admirably trying to do anything but that, the results are the strain of incompatible parts-a band with the heart of a Dodge Challenger and the assembly line and plasticine production of a Kia. Why should southern boys like Luke Bryan and Eric Church have all the fun these days? There is nothing inherently wrong with Gaslight Anthem going this route their whole cross-armed, “real rock ‘n roll” moralizing was tired even before Handwritten, and more power to them if they turn out to be the rare band who can summon the endearing qualities of Jersey hair metal.
The main difference is that Bruce made you think he actually worked at a carwash, whereas Jon wanted you to think he was a fucking cowboy. The running subtext is that Gaslight had as much Bon Jovi in them as they did Bruce, but it’s a subtle joke, since Get Hurt draws from a specific time when those guys were essentially two sides of the same coin: both are Jersey boys who packed stadiums with anthemic, synth-gilded rock songs that used role playing and blue-collar archetype to distract you from the storyteller’s celebrity.
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