Click to listen to The Horrible Crowes' album 'Elsie'

On this side project, Gaslight Anthem frontman Brian Fallon trades his main band's Springsteenian punk for pianos and ballad choruses - moving up the East Coast corridor not far from Billy Joel country. Fallon drops his trademark cheap-scotch growl to a whisper, singing about loneliness ("Cherry Blossoms") and missed opportunities ("Blood Loss"). The songs are more subdued, but he doesn't skimp on conviction, often playing the patron saint of hard-luck cases (including his own). And while this is sometimes just a softfocus version of Gaslight's bruised romanticism, his weathered tenderness makes it stick. "Did you say you were afraid of dying?/I ain't lived a single day without you," he sings on "I Believe Jesus Brought Us Together." Call it corny - in his broken timbre, it's sad-sack gospel.

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“He Will Break Your Heart”

A lightly swinging Latin-influenced, almost cha-cha groove and close harmonies decorated Jerry Butler's early soul hit "He Will Break Your Heart," delivering a stately warning that his rival would never love his girl like he did. The melody came to Butler as he was driving on the highway from Atlantic City, New Jersey, to Philadelphia with Curtis Mayfield, and as Butler told Rolling Stone, "I just sang the melody and Curtis put the chords to it." The song's premise, Butler added, "was something that I'd lived ...The lyric was an experience rather than a revelation. Whereas music is usually a revelation."