Hear It Now: Gaslight Anthem's 'American Slang'

Springsteen-endorsed Jersey rock heroes the Gaslight Anthem unleash their new album American Slang on June 14th, but Rolling Stone is offering up an early listen to the band's third LP right now. Click below to listen to all of the working class anthems and big beer-soaked choruses Brian Fallon and Co. deliver on American Slang's 10 songs, from the opening salvo of the title track to their sweeping, lighter-worthy closer "We Did It When We Were Young."

Hear it Now: Click to listen to the Gaslight Anthem's American Slang.

Gaslight Anthem exploded out of the Garden State and into the mainstream thanks to their punk-meets-classic rock second disc. The '59 Sound drew inspiration from Tom Petty, Bob Seger and of course Bruce Springsteen, this time around the band has crafted a sound that gloriously combines the Clash, Motown and the Pretenders.

The band was recently named one of Rolling Stone's 40 Reasons to Get Excited About Music, and the frontman told RS he's no stranger to hearing the Springsteen comparisons. "There's a lot of parallels between Bruce Springsteen's younger life and mine," says Fallon, who previously worked as a carpenter and once lived a mere four blocks from the fabled E Street. "We came from the same area, and there's a certain sense that everybody loses down there. So you almost feel that you want to win for everybody — that you're carrying on a lot of people's concerns, and their hopes, and their dreams." That message is rallied boisterously and melodically on American Slang: Fallon roars tales of creative types who get beaten up in the ring ("Boxer"), rich girls getting lost in the big city ("The Queen of Lower Chelsea") and unshakable nostalgia ("Old Haunts").

As an added bonus, Rolling Stone has an exclusive stream of the new 7" single by Indiana rockers Chamberlain, one of Fallon's favorite bands. Chamberlain broke up in 2000 and reunited only last year for a handful of shows. Fallon personally convinced them to regroup again and tour with Gaslight Anthem this summer. This 7" was recorded for the tour and features new track "Raise It High," as well as a guest appearance by Fallon on B side "The South Has Spoiled Me." Listen to both American Slang and the "Raise It High" 7" here now:

Hear it Now: Click to listen to Chamberlain's new 7".

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Song Stories

“Piano Man”

Billy Joel | 1973

Billy Joel’s first hit, “Piano Man,” was – ironically – an autobiographical lament about how his first album wasn’t a hit. When Cold Spring Harbor didn’t take off, Joel briefly became a lounge pianist in Los Angeles, and this song, about that experience, expressed his frustrations and fears at the time: “And they sit at the bar and put bread in my jar/And say, ‘Man, what are you doing here?’” “It was all right,” Joel said later, about the gig. “I got free drinks and union scale, which was the first steady money I’d made in a long time.”

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