Concertwire.com

In January 2012, The Gaslight Anthem piled into their old tour van and headed across the New Jersey state line for a 14 hour road trip to Nashville on their own quest for the truth. Their destination was 2806 Azalea Place, Nashville, Blackbird Studio, where the New Brunswick quartet had booked five weeks recording time with producer Brendan O’Brien. Their mission: to reconnect with rock ‘n’ roll in its most feral, pure, stripped-raw form. The result is Handwritten, the most committed, affecting and compelling album of The Gaslight Anthem’s career to date. Introduced by muscular lead-off single 45, which received it’s world premiere on BBC Radio 1 as Zane Lowe’s Hottest Record In The World on April 30, it finds the Jersey boys in inspired form, decanting ’60′s soul, ’70′s stadium rock, ’80s hardcore and ’90′s grunge into eleven white-knuckle, blue-collar everyman anthems. Brian Fallon likens its incandescent electrical storms to “Tom Petty songs [being] played by Pearl Jam”. Put more simply, it’s a supercharged American rock ‘n’ roll classic.