Note: This is the second installment in a weekly series entitled Rock & Roll Means Well, which was also the name of a 2008 tour embarked upon by The Hold Steady and Drive-By Truckers. I’m going to try and focus on current American music done that, I dunno, belongs together.

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.