Heartfelt heartland rock delivered by Gaslight Anthem frontman.
Brian Fallon has been making music with The Gaslight Anthem for two decades. Outside of the band, over the past 10 years, he’s released a number of solo albums. His latest album, Not Bad for New Jersey, is very much informed by New Jersey, the state in which he was born. Fallon collaborated on the recordings with Butch Walker, with whom he has said he shares a “telepathic understanding.” Walker has worked with Green Day, Jesse Malin and Taylor Swift, amongst others. Walker not only produced the album but also played bass and piano, as well as contributing backing vocals. It could be argued that Fallon brings a distinctly New Jersey, blue-collar storytelling style, while Walker adds the polished hooks and melodic shine of classic 1980s rock, creating songs that combine Tom Petty’s rootsy charm, Bryan Adams’ arena-ready anthems, and nods towards another New Jersey native, Bruce Springsteen.
The title track was written in 15 minutes, with Fallon saying that he was trying to create a “Tom Petty vibe.” Not Bad for New Jersey certainly captures the writer’s pride in coming from the Garden State. It’s a straight-out-of-the-blocks start. Brian Fallon and Canadian singer-songwriter Donovan Woods co-wrote Better Before as the tale of an unravelling romance. It’s delivered in Fallon’s trademark heartland-rock style. The aim was, according to Fallon, to make a song that could have appeared on Bryan Adams’s 1986 album Reckless, and the result bears this out, with echoes of Run to You in the song’s introduction and opening riff. It’s certainly one of the darker songs on the record, with Fallon singing “I was better before the night I met you.”
Pearls is one of the more downbeat tracks. It’s a mature breakup song as Fallon sings “You can have the whole world, No you can’t have pearls, No you can’t have me.” Fallon has called upon a number of his musical friends to contribute to the record. Grammy-winning Lori Mackenna co-wrote On Good Terms, to which she also contributes vocals. It’s another story of a broken relationship. Nobody Likes You in New York City is a paean to Dee Dee Ramone written from the perspective of his ex-wife Vera Boldis.
The Killers’ Brandon Flowers contributes to Love at the End of the World. It’s a song built on a chord progression stemming from a synth riff Flowers came up with in the studio, which Fallon translated to the guitar. It’s a song with no clear chorus, which reflects that time is limited and that love is precious because of the existence of death, as Fallon sings, “Don’t take me for granted, one day I’ll be gone.” It’s one of the softer songs on the album. Def Leppard’s lead guitarist, Phil Collen, provides some guitar wizardry in the form of some prominent, noodly solos on Somewhere You Shouldn’t Be. Wolf by the River, featuring maverick guitar player Marc Ribot, is a rocking but dark murder ballad; when the protagonist asks “Why in my youth would you strike me down?“, the spine-tingling response is “I am a wolf, after all, my darling.”
This is Fallon’s most explicitly rock’n’roll album for many years. It’s delivered with sincerity and a large amount of craftsmanship. However, the record rarely breaks new ground, revisiting themes and musical territory that Fallon has been exploring for years. Will it win Fallon any new fans? Probably not, but that said, what Fallon does, he does very well.
