The Gaslight Anthem Band • Page 115

My Get Hurt revised tracklist looks like this:

Stay Vicious
1000 Years
Get Hurt
Sweet Morphine
Helter Skeleton
Underneath the Ground
Rollin’ and Tumblin’
Selected Poems
Mama’s boys
Ain’t That a Shame
Have Mercy
Dark Places

(Although, after reading the post above, i wouldn’t mind switching the last 2 tracks)

 

Get Hurt era has so many great songs. I get when people say that the track order doesn’t work for them, because to each their own and as a big fan I think the song transitions could have been smoother. Nice part about digital music is you can recreate your own track list.

Also, the album production is still really good on this. Not enough credit to Crosses for this album.

 

I've tried it out a bunch of times with Have Mercy second-to-last and keeping Dark Places as the closer as it is on the actual album, but it just feels so much more natural the other way to me. Dark Places musically is kinda like The Backseat in that it's really epic but lyrically it's really dark and depressing, and Get Hurt has never felt to me like it should go out on a song like that. The Backseat works for The 59 Sound but a song like that has never felt like the best way to end this album to me.

 

Have Mercy is definitely better as an album closer, imo. Dark Places is more "climactic", but Have Mercy works beautifully as a sort of post-script or whatever. Oddly, I feel like Handwritten is the opposite effect, where "Blue Dahlia" is a better album closer than "National Anthem".

 

I dunno, that one-two punch of Mae and National Anthem as an album closer is really special imo. In my digital tracklist, I took out "Too Much Blood" and put "Desire" in it's place, then put "Blue Dahlia" in track 9 where "Desire" was. Following "Biloxi Parish" with "Blue Dahlia" is a lot haha but in a good way

 

I’ve tried so many variations on the Get Hurt tracklist, and I’ve come to the conclusion that this set of songs just doesn’t work together. There are flashes of greatness, but I do not think there is a way to make it cohere into a strong album. It’s just a mess. I don’t think any of Fallon’s other records have that problem.

 

This sums up my thoughts on Get Hurt nicely. It's not a bad album by any stretch of the imagination; it's just not a coherent Gaslight Anthem album stacked up against the rest of their discography.

 

Get Hurt whips ass, y'all trippin.

 

I find it funny how polite the drums are on Get Hurt

 

I am content to be trippin' and hatin' on this one. Brian has put out 7+ albums of quality stuff over the last 11ish years so there was bound to be a misstep.

August can't get here soon enough.

 

"Polite" hahaha I like that terminology. The drum production is great, but yeah Benny's playing is a little more subdued/groove-based than on previous albums. I also thought Alex Rosamilia's playing took a backseat on this album, which is a bummer because he always had a cool riff for almost every song.

 

Yeah, Rosamilia being shifted into the background is maybe my least favorite thing about Get Hurt. His playing was so central to Handwritten.

 

And American Slang. The main riffs for the title track and "Orphans" and "The Spirit of Jazz" are all fantastic.

 

Yeah Rosamilia's album is American Slang in my mind.

 

That too, but his playing tends to be lower in the mix/panned to the side on a lot of American Slang tracks. It’s really front and center throughout most of Handwritten.

 

I think the people who comment lain about Get Hurt don’t actually listen to the album.

It’s opens with some drums. The first track released, Rollin and Tumbling has great drums, the build up in Dark Places is done with drums.

Benny is not in the background. It’s a great collection of songs. Just doesn’t have the same flow as other records.

 

I was put off of Get Hurt for ages because of the singles. I like most of the songs now, but it's easily Brian's worst album.

 

It’s not. It is the album that is the least romantic/nostalgic because of where he was personally. It was a shift from love songs and the radio, to bring heart broken.

I’ve always been able to appreciate that a writer isn’t always feeling the same way. Not every punk song needs to be angry. Not every Gaslight song needed to be upbeat.

Every album is different for a reason. Brian keeps them cohesively his, but let’s it become its own thing like a different child.

 

Get Hurt was released the week before I got out of a six year relationship so it will always have a special place for me.

 

i've been getting mighty impatient waiting for June to get here. for those attending GovBall, sounds like they may be getting up to 90 minute range (the founders said "They are one of our very favorite bands. They have a very long set time at gov ball"). compared to other past closers, seems like an hour and fifteen is a safe bet.

 

Made a new one today at work, gonna try it out on my drive home -->

1. Stay Vicious
2. Rollin' and Tumblin'
3. Get Hurt
4. Selected Poems
5. Helter Skeleton
6. Underneath The Ground
7. Mama's Boys
8. Red Violins
9. Ain't That A Shame
10. Dark Places
11. Sweet Morphine
12. Have Mercy

Lately I've been trying to swap out 1,000 Years for Mama's Boys. 1,000 Years is a good song musically, but it has some pretty clunky and cringe-worthy lyrics and doesn't seem to be about a whole hell of a lot, whereas Mama's Boys just feels so essential to me on an album dealing so heavily with divorce. I'm not crazy about how the first few songs flow here as the production / sound on Rollin' and Tumblin' has always felt kinda raw to me where 1,000 feels pristine. I do like the way 1,000 Years flows into Get Hurt, but I wanted to keep Track 2 high energy and have always felt Rollin' and Tumblin' should have been earlier in the tracklist. Not crazy about Dark Places losing the pebultimate slot either... Trying to get the the second half of this album to flow is a goddamn nightmare haha. We'll see how this goes...

 

1,000 Years is one of the four songs on that album I actually love, so I definitely wouldn’t cut it. Also, making Dark Places anything but the closer is nuts to me.

 

1000 Years is a great song musically, but yeah some of those lyrics aren't great. But Mama's Boys on the other hand, that's a great song through and through. I'll have to try this list out, but I agree with @Craig Manning , Dark Places is a great closer for this record. I'd put Have Mercy before it, and swap out Red Violins for the original version of Halloween.

 

1,000 Years is pretty much the only song I come back to on that record. It's the only chorus that does anything for me.

 

1,000 Years, Selected Poems, Dark Places, Underneath the Ground, Helter Skeleton, and Get Hurt are all great tracks that would hold their own on the bands best releases. most bands would be very fortunate to have their "worst" record be as good as Get Hurt.