The Gaslight Anthem + Deer Tick + Bayside @ O2 Academy 23rd November 2014
The Gaslight Anthem’s five date headline tour of the UK ends tonight, at the Academy in Birmingham tonight. Supporting the release of their 2014 release of their 5th album ‘Get Hurt’, they have bought along Rhode Islanders Deer Tick and the New York emo/punk veterans Bayside.
Celebrating their 15th year as a band, Bayside kick off tonight’s proceedings. Heading into the catchy as hell ‘Boy’ which sounds just as good tonight as it does on record, With Anthony Raneri’s unique voice and guitarist Jack O’shea’s immense guitar skill being obvious from the beginning. Their on stage tightness and general music ability are well known, but this seems to do nothing for a particularly stubborn crowd. The applause is muted throughout the set, which, considering the room is pretty much packed already is pretty disheartening. The bands short-lived set is a nice mix of Bayside’s music, with songs off their recent album ‘Cult’, such as ‘Stuttering’ sounding particularly energetic and strong. Although Bayside try their best to show the crowd what they can do, it’s obvious that, except a couple of Bayside fans, this is The Gaslight Anthem’s crowd.
Next up are Deer Tick, who, despite being around for ten years are a completely new band for me, but I was interested to hear what they were all about. Well, they were good, really good in fact. The two singers voices were very original and both very strong, with both having strong southern, country vibes. Lead singer John McCauley was very raspy, bluesy and would even have short bouts of aggressiveness which was unexpected but highly entertaining. This description sums up the whole band in fact, they were very bluesy, folky, Rock and Roll and there was an obvious element of country which spread through their music. The whole set was capped off by a saxophone solo, which was a pleasant surprise. I shall definitely be checking Deer Tick out some more as they were very impressive.
I think if one word could sum up the career of The Gaslight Anthem, it would be solid. They’re music has been consistently solid over the course of their career which has seen them release five full length albums. All of which, although very well produced, well played and full of honesty and heart, never really were more than solid.
Sure, there were a few songs such as the brilliant ‘45’, the anthemic ‘The 59 Sound’ and my favourite ‘Handwritten’ but these were all big singles. I often find when I’m listening to The Gaslight Anthem that I would just skip most of the songs and listen to the big well known ones.
This feeling was never felt more than tonight, although they did play all the big ones pretty early in the set which was a very enjoyable start. I kept thinking that after they’ve played these ones I’m going to be bored, and I was. Although, there was no doubt throughout that Gaslight Anthem are very good musicians and Brian Fallon is a very good singer a lot of their songs sound very samey and there is never much outside of the box thinking when it comes to song writing.
The Gaslight Anthem were good tonight, not bad but also not great. They do what they do well, it’s just a shame that what they do tends to sound the same a lot of the time.
Review : Francis Sebestjanowicz
Photographs: Steve Kilmister