If you were walking down the street and saw these dudes, you would know that they were in a band. A rock band. Maybe a rock band for the kids. It’s pretty obvious, isn’t it?

The Gaslight Anthem are a band, and really all I know about them is that they’re from New Jersey. I admit, “The Gaslight Anthem” is a stupid band name, and I would have never even bothered listening to them if it weren’t for the insistence of a friend of mine that I would like them. This comes after a night last November where I rocked my ass off (for the second night in a row, mind you) to Drive-By Truckers and The Hold Steady over in San Francisco, and she was there to know what I really might like.

Still, I put it off and it wasn’t until an evening in December, a week before Christmas, stuck in traffic on Interstate 80 heading west over Donner Pass in the snow and waiting to put the chains on the car that I read an article in The Onion exalting their most recent record The ‘59 Sound in their year end best-of list. Simply, it said they fell somewhere between Against Me! and some dude named Bruce Springsteen. I guess I had to give this a listen.

Simply put, at first I was torn as to if I should like this band or not. They have a shitty-ass emo band name, borrow liberally from the Boss, using his characters and referencing his songs, and sometimes comes off more as The Killers without the keyboards. I was so torn, but I could not deny that these songs are catchy as shit, but also catchy in the sense that 2001-era Jimmy Eat World songs were catchy. Is this a guilty pleasure or am I just guilty?

Fuck it. I am a fan. At least, I like The ‘59 Sound, and if you’re on the fence and you believe in critical acclaim (especially haters like Pitchfork who gave this record a 8.6/10.0), redemption, The Boss, a “high and lonesome sound,” punk bands who grow up and listen to older records, and rock and roll music that is catchy and good and makes you want to go to shows, push your way up front, jump up and down, and singalong, that’s what The Gaslight Anthem do.

“Even Cowgirls Get The Blues” may be a bit of a bait and switch with this band, but this is the song I think of the most. The way Brian Fallon belts out the line “Can I get a witness pretty baby?” shows the urgency, immediacy, and sincerity that the Gaslight Anthem bring to their kind of music.

It may be for the kids, but that doesn’t mean it has to suck.

This is also the first in an attempt to post an MP3 a week. I hope this works.

First, I should get something out of the way:

MIKE COOLEY IS A FUCKING GENIUS.

There, I’ve said it. I’ve thought about that line a million times, anytime one of his songs comes on my iPod shuffle as I’m riding up Broadway in Oakland, anytime he took the microphone on the two shows I saw last November at the Fillmore in San Francisco, and anytime I put on his playlist I’ve made of all the Cooley Drive-By Truckers songs…it just, fucking, works.

I’ve always kind of liked the Drive-By Truckers. I first heard them sometime around 2001 when a guy I’d met through his blog put a song of theirs, the ultra-fine “One Of These Days” (from DBT’s 1999 album Pizza Deliverance) on a mix CD that I ended up with as part of some weblog community thing. I honestly forget how we met, but me and Armando hung out a couple time around North Carolina as a I traveled around.

Anyways. I ended up putting the song on a mix CD I made called The Russian River: Songs For Rural Driving around the same time. I used to have a delivery route that I took up to Sonoma County in California every Wednesday, and the music matched the backroads landscape that I saw every week.

I had started to get into country music, American rock & roll, and, well, stuff that was old. Before that I had been rooted in current indie pop and indie rock releases, and before that I liked the punkier offerings the 1990’s had to offer. This was different, and “One Of These Days” fit right in.

I kept after Drive-By Truckers, putting each additional release on my iPod, loving some songs, being ho-hum about others, and then they booked a tour with my new favorite band, The Hold Steady, and they called that tour Rock & Roll Means Well.

I went to both shows in San Francisco, but the first one had DBT headlining, and then I realized why I LOVED some songs and thought others were OK: Mike Cooley. I guess I knew there were different singers and songwriters in the band, but it wasn’t until I saw the live show that I knew who sang all, and I mean all, of my very favorite songs. “Carl Perkin’s Caddilac,” (a favorite of mine on my monthly Honky-Tonk DJ set), “Lisa’s Birthday,” the kind of funny but super real “Bob,” “Gravity’s Gone, “Zip City,” “Women Without Whiskey,” “72 (This Highway’s Mean),” and “Shut Up And Get On The Plane” from Southern Rock Opera, “Marry Me,” “Three Dimes Down,” and “Self-Destructive Zones” all from Brighter Than Creation’s Dark. It was all Cooley. All his storytelling songwriting genius and I instantly realized that I liked, loved, Drive-By Truckers even more than I thought.

So, how to pick a song, one song to feature. Last night, riding up Broadway on my 1976 Schwinn, coming back from a good air hockey tournament and even better Belgian ales, “A Ghost To Most” from 2008’s excellent Brighter Than Creation’s Dark came on my little green iPod shuffle and I started singing along. It felt good. It felt GREAT, I slowed up a bit to let the song finish before I got home, riding past Kaye’s, the Kragen, the Burger King, singing aloud:

Drive-By Truckers: A Ghost To Most:
Download audio file (?f=Drive-By Truckers - A Ghost To Most)

Fucking tops. It’s a powerful song, it’s a song that I get, and it’s a song, like most of Cooley’ songs, that tells a story. I encourage you to seek out all of the songs mention above, and hopefully you’ll get some of the magic that I do.

This post was longer than I’d wanted it to be, but fuck it. Check in next Monday for another MP3.

The next day my opponent posted some photos on Facebook. The bruises were brutal and at first I felt bad until I realized that we had a good time. A couple days later, I found a small bruise on my left arm. I *never* bruise, so I felt proud that my ass got slightly kicked as well.

Some of these songs we listened to that night, some other ones I didn’t hear until this week (the new CSS album is great, and I like this Black Kids song quite a bit). These are my 13 favorite songs as of like…right now.

01. Black Kids: Look At Me (When I Rock Wichoo)

02. CSS: Left Behind (“So I’m Gonna Fly Back To Helsinki, even stay there for awhile. Gonna get my things back, gonna get some fun, gonna drink till I pass out. I’m gonna get on to the table and dance my ass off till I die.”)

03. Asobi Seksu: Goodbye

04. Annie: I know Ur Girlfriend Hates Me

05. Girl Talk: No Pause (especially the beginning)

06. Tobacco: Hairy Candy (fucking awesome. Tobaco and BMSR destroy.)

07. CSS: Beautiful Song

08. Wolf Parade: The Grey Estates

09. R. Kelly & Broken Social Scene: I’m A Flirt (Shoreline) (Good for dance punching)

10. The Notwist: Good Lies

11. The Tallest Man On Earth: The Gardner (I should hate this. It reminds me of David Gray and that movie “Once.” I don’t hate it.)

12. Gram Parsons: Big Mouth Blues (New York City has a lot to do with it)

13. Steely Dan: Black Cow (Good for doing dishes)