Round of 64: (12) The Gaslight Anthem - The '59 Sound vs. (53) Etta James - At Last Bracket • Page 2

I mean, if you don’t want to listen to the other album, don’t vote. That’s fine! Or give it a shot, if that sounds worthwhile to you. Also fine! Just don’t approach it with the attitude of “Oh, now I have to listen to this thing that a lot of people love? Woe is me!” That Black Flag album from the other thread ultimately wasn’t my thing at all, but I’d never given that band a shot before and was probably overdue to do so.

 

At laaaaaaaaaaaaaaaast... I get to vote for my second favorite Gaslight album.

 

Gaslight wouldn’t exist without Etta but I suppose that’s not the question being asked so…yep 59 sound

 

Ive heard it, just keeping it lively!

But I don’t like it cuz it espouses a kinda sus worldview, nostalgic for a contemptable era with a kinda backward, or at least very immature, view of relationships

 

I think that reading is way off, but you do you.

 

Enlighten me! I dig longing, I desire desire, but reading the lyrics we got…

a demeaning view of a sexually empowered woman at a diner, for whom he has paternalizing pet names like “kitten” (why is he being creepy? Is she underage?), in a song where he laments women like his first wife leaving him and for some reason expects the same from the new one, cuz, i dunno? girls are objects and they’re all the same to him? Do the women in any of his songs have agency or a personality or do they exist as accessories to his own pathos?

Probably not, cuz it’s the ‘59 sound he wants, the old ways where girls stand by their man in everlasting monogamy, and cigarettes are lit with strike anywheres while your boys gaggle up a girl you aim to claim. It’s for her good though, she needs to come apart in his arms. Why? Who cares. She’s a thing he can hold, like the half dozen girls in “Here’s Lookin’ At You Kid” who shoulda married him. I’m not sure why, he seems like a self involved bozo.

Lucky for us, he explains himself in the last song. He’s a conditional lover, if you don’t let him go, he won’t let you down. You gotta understand that its her job to keep him on the straight and narrow, as we all know, cowboys go crazy in the heat, chasing Santa Ana girls that mean nothing.

Because he wants a simple fantasy world where film noir isnt a transgressive political mode, its a lovelorn boy suffering the rain and all those lying babes, a fantasy world where Miles Davis is synecdoche for cool in his white world. He doesn’t wanna worry about the unseemly bits of the old ways, he wants classic cars, he wants movie screens, and he wants Mary by his side. Any Mary will do, they’re all the same to him.

 

i actually kind of agree but keep the same energy then when blink is up in the tournament

 

Why did you read all of the lyrics of an album you’ll never listen to

 

…i listened to it?

and yes blink 182 is highly sus. The name is a joke!

 

On my early listens, I actually didn't disagree with a lot of this. I heard a record that was obsessed with nostalgia, to a fault. But I think there's way more vulnerability and fear and insecurity in there than you're giving it credit for, and I think those attributes (and a lot of what you're saying here!) add up to a pretty authentic warts-and-all portrait of growing up. Yes, the songs are packed with fantasies, including fantasy girls. But that's how self-centered twentysomethings often think! And I'd argue that, by the last few songs on the record, he's starting to see that his fantasies are only leading him to a late-night diner, all alone.

Anyway, I've written a lot about this album if you're interested in a more charitable take on it. Here's some stuff I wrote for the 10-year anniversary:

 

Strangely impressed with that analysis

 

I recommend you return to your earlier impressions, cuz this anniverary piece seems to be accomodating sentimentality for a juvenile album.

By which I mean, which lyrics in these last few songs reveal a distate for the misogyny oozing out of the album? Reading them again, I’m not getting there.

In “Even Cowgirls Get The Blues”, folks with Bruce-Springsteen-song names get married and have kids, but not him, he’s still playin pinball while “little lita” (on Tidal “lita” isn’t capitaized, I dunno if that’s official? I hope he’s not referencing an underage girl again) waits for him. I dunno if this is a sidepiece for him or a lita whose attention he’s happy to use, it doesn’t seem to be his “pretty baby” who he wants to sing slow songs to him, but the lyric is unclear, and objectifying either way.

He says “all i want is you to be alright and satisfied” but how? He’ll answer her call? Then what? All he talks about is what girls can do for him!

It doesn’t matter, cuz it’s all about driving the old men crazy, like that Thin Lizzy downtown girl, except in Fallon’s version, girls are an object in men’s parrying with each other.

Why does she have to “tell her poppa she’ll be home”? Is she underage? Or is this a partriachal culture where a man a gets permission from the father to possess a girl. Cuz his is a world where girls aren’t people, they’re just girls.

Sally is a girl who knows what she wants, she’s gonna wash these sins of position at the river’s edge. I’m not sure why Fallon is referencing that movie? Maybe he isn’t? Is the guy gonna kill Sally?

I guess it’s not a big leap from the guy in the next song deceiving the girls who won’t pony up to him. Doesn’t she know about all the young blood he’s spilled on his floor for her? Has she not heard the taking back sunday song? He was ready to give her a ride!

Alas, the mid 8 tells us boys will be boys. If that’s how you see the world, what else are you to do?

Personally, I think Anna made the right choice canceling on this dipshit and moving to the city. With any luck, she met a respectful partner there on 7th avenue.

The Backseat is an interesting song because our kid is finally acknowledging he’s slumming it in that burned out Chevrolet from that Bruce track. But I dunno why he’s trying find room for his knees in there. I would simply get out of the car

 

Hrrrmmmm. Maybe not lol

 

I, for one, look forward to the upcoming re-recorded tracks on the '59 Sound, including "Here's Looking at You Through the Male Gaze" and "Even Cowgirls Deserve the Right to Choose".

 

That’s not really the good joke u think it is

 

Yes it is

 

see y’all sunday lol bunch of weirdos

 

Sexism is bad

 

Feeling impressionable tonight, are we? Haha

 

Craig’s got the right take, for the record

 

Etta James is responsible for the best Brian Fallon solo song. But no album ever made is better than the 59 Sound in my eyes.

 

That IS the best Fallon solo song. Tremendous vocal from him on that one.

 

Counterpoint: arguably song ever made is better than At Last

 

Blood Loss is runner up for mine. And for similar reasons, monster vocals.