The Gaslight Anthem w/ Against Me | House of Blues Boston 9/16/14Empty Bottle Evenings

Sep222014September 22, 2014September 23, 20141 Commentby Bake

The Gaslight Anthem w/ Against Me | House of Blues Boston 9/16/14

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Two bands that I love. Two bands that I wrote about in a negative light within the past year. I was let down by The Gaslight Anthem’s Get Hurt for not meeting my admittedly high expectations while Against Me’s Transgender Dysphoria Blues, well, just wasn’t very good. But seeing them live wasn’t something that I wanted to miss for a couple reasons. Most importantly, I love and respect both of these bands and know they put on a great live show. Secondly, I’ve gone to enough shows where after seeing new songs live I’m much more willing to give them a second chance.

Against Me opened with one of my favorite songs “Pints of Guinness Make you Strong” but I was late and missed it because I suck. To be fair I was on crutches and it took a long time to hobble my way into the venue. Upon arriving I was offered a seat in the balcony, but injured or not I wanted to be close enough to the crowd that I could feel the energy. It was a good choice. By the time they were rocking through their 3rd song of the night, the title track to 2007’s New Wave, I was drinking PBR and exuberantly singing along while using the crutch to prop myself up. Hell yeah, it was punk rock. And it’s actually a lot easier to release the pain when you’re screaming along to punk music. The physical pain gives a nice depth to your voice. Healthy or not, the crowd did scream along as Laura Jane Grace and crew ripped through songs from the new album while mixing in old favorites like “Walking is Still Honest”, “Cliché Guevara”, “Don’t Lose Touch”, and “Thrash Unreal”. The performance was pretty impressive, and did get me to appreciate songs like “Transgender Dysphoria Blues” and “Black Me Out” more even if I’m still not sold on the album as whole.

The Gaslight Anthem opened with the first song off their new album, a typical rock band move, but one that sucks more when you don’t love the song. Also adding to my displeasure was that Gaslight already wrote the perfect opening song “American Slang” two albums ago. It’s got that great intro and slow build up and… they didn’t play it at all. But hey, no one’s perfect. Which is a terrible justification for anything, but they’re my favorite band and I’m feeling charitable. Along some of the other material from Get Hurt (7 songs from the new disc were played on the night) they excelled with the stuff from their last few albums like “45”, “High Lonesome” and “Handwritten” before closing the set with the aptly named stand out track “Great Expectations” from The ’59 Sound.

It wasn’t the best performance I’ve even seen from them, but certainly not the worst. Musically, they sounded great, although lead singer Brian Fallon’s crowd banter wavered on the line between funny and unintelligible nonsense. And they did two things that I appreciate from live bands. One, they played their older songs, and not just from the most recent previous albums but from their first album Sink or Swim (“We Came to Dance” and “1930”) as well. Too often bands ditch their earliest albums as their discography grows larger over the years. But it pisses me off to not honor any of the stuff that built your fanbase up to begin with. The Gaslight Anthem didn’t disappoint there. They also played a B-side “Blue Dahlia” that everyone went nuts for. I actually didn’t know the song, but as someone who is usually the guy at the show who knows every obscure song and is happily surprised when a band actually plays the rare ones, I appreciated it. Just because I’m too old to be in the cool group that knows the rarities doesn’t mean I’m not excited to hear them. And I downloaded it as soon as I got home so they must be doing something right still.