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make ends meet. Brian's mom wrote grant proposals for the same hospital where she gave birth to him. His dad had been laid off from the Nestlč factory in Freehold. Times were tough. When Brian asked his mom for a stereo for Christmas, like all the other kids had, she said they couldn't afford it, but she had an idea.
"In the freezing cold winter, we got a paper route together," Fallon, now 28, recalls. "She was doing it to pay off some of the bills, and I was doing it to buy my stereo."
Rock 'n' roll, he remembers, picked that moment to show him a way out. "I was sitting in the back of the car at 5 or 6 in the morning, and my mom would always play me music - she was a folk singer in college - and we were driving and 'Just Like a Woman' by Bob Dylan came on the radio. I was like, 'Whoa, stop everything!' I heard this song and everything kinda just came down at once - I remember the feeling, that I don't want to be freezing cold and struggle like this. I want to do that. I thought, well, if he could do it - and he can't even sing - I'm doing it. I got the guitar and that was it."
After that winter, Fallon saved enough from his paper route to buy that stereo, which led to a whole lot of other music besides Dylan - Springsteen (naturally), Tom Petty, the Replacements - and eventually, the music he started making with a rock band of his own called the Gaslight Anthem.
The recurring themes found in the work of those bands - struggle, stumbles, and salvation distilled into deeply personal songs about growing up - are at the core of both the Gaslight Anthem's bracing 2007 debut, "Sink or Swim," and its even better follow-up, "The '59 Sound," due out in August.
Fallon's gruff but tender voice and heart-on-sleeve, hard-luck lyrics, pushed along by the group's fiercely ragged power-roots approach, have quickly found an audience. After a headlining club tour that brings it to the Middle East Upstairs tomorrow night, the Gaslight Anthem will head to Europe before returning to the states to join this summer's Warped Tour. The sudden attention has left the band - which includes bassist Alex Levine, drummer Benny Horowitz, and guitarist Alex Rosamilia - a bit taken aback.
"We'll go to play a show and say, 'I hope we have some kids here,' and they'll tell us we're sold out already. And we'll say, 'Are these people here for the right band?'," recounts Fallon with a self-conscious laugh. He speaks with the same kind of mixture of sincerity, warmth, and contemplative humility that fuels songs like "Great Expectations" and the new album's title track.
"Here it's funny because you don't really grow up thinking you're going to be a doctor or a lawyer or a scientist," says Fallon, who grew up in New Brunswick. "Everybody here does what their father does, or something close to it. You don't see a lot of people from here saying, 'Oh, I'm gonna be an actor.' There's a lot of, 'Well, my dad works in a factory, so I guess I'm gonna probably work in a factory.' There's not that sense of possibility. You have to dream up your own."
Indeed, the defiant mantra of "no retreat, no regrets," which Fallon half sings, half shouts on "Meet Me by the River's Edge" seems to sum up his worldview. Likewise, the bittersweet fairy tale of "Here's Looking at You, Kid" and most of the new album's dozen songs, are stirring sketches, sharply drawn portraits of people on the razor's edge of hope and futility.
Ultimately, where the debut's rag-tag parade of dime-store prophets and dirty angels offered a glimpse of the Gaslight Anthem's vast, precocious potential, "The '59 Sound" is an album of dreamed-up possibilities fully realized. And really, they're just now getting started.
"I could care less about ever having a No. 1 single," Fallon says. "I would just like to be able to play and have people who grow old with you, and you stay with them through their life. We've got a few sentences, maybe, to say what life's about. Hopefully, we'll get a chapter later."

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an absolutely stunning album that at its core draws equally from punk, rock and folk. The album’s opening track, “Boomboxes and Dictionaries,” is an up-tempo number with some “whoo-oh-ohs” that will sound familiar to any fan of Against Me! However, it may not have been the best song to lead things off with, as either “Wooderson” or “Drive” would have served that role more appropriately. In fact, the sequencing may be the only thing wrong with Sink or Swim; it seems to be arranged in an almost arbitrary fashion, with acoustic songs breaking the momentum when another selection would have kept things going at a more “total rock out” pace. Vocalist Brian Falon’s lyrics are full of Springsteen-esque Americana and peppered with elements of Billy Bragg and Woody Guthrie. His almost romantic references to driving and things having a tendency to work out okay are as enjoyable to listen to as the music, which at often times is carried by the modest but technically brilliant guitar playing of Alex Rosamilia. Sink or Swim is one of the best punk albums 2007 has seen, and if it’s any indication, Gaslight Anthem are due to explode. (XOXO)

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a slightly rootsy feel. Lucero meets Good Riddance if you will. Gruff like a cheap bottle of whiskey but catchy enough to warrant a second shot. It makes you warm inside but might leave you regretting it in the morning. I’m going to classify it as a brand new genre called honky-tonk hardcore. The guitars ferociously rip and shred but retain just enough twang and jangle that you can envision dusty old boots kicking open a saloon door somewhere while the gritty vocals reek of cigarettes and alcohol. It sounded perfect during my 3 mile sunset jog this evening. I’ve got a feeling that you might like it too. RIYL: Against Me!, Murder By Death, The Forecast, etc…

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