We know from their occasional covers of State of Love and Trust, that The Gaslight Anthem are fans of Pearl Jam, but Spin Magazine recently sat down with lead singer, Brian Fallon, to discuss their new, Brendan-O'Brien-produced album, Handwritten, and his musical influences. He talks about the interesting way in which he has allowed Pearl Jam to influence his music.
It seems to me that it might be easier to change lyrical perspectives than musical ones. Did you attempt making music in a new way, also?
We sat in a room and jammed like we were kids, which is something we hadn't done before. What I used to do, I was way into, "All the guys in the '60s and '70s used tape echoes. So I'll use tape echo, too. They didn't use any effects, so I'm not gonna." Why? It doesn't fit for us anymore. All the guys in the band are around 30-years-old. We're '90s kids. We grew up on grunge. The first music that I ever discovered myself that made me want to smash my parents' living room was Nirvana and Pearl Jam. I started thinking about, like, "What was the essence of Pearl Jam?" They like Neil Young and the Who, but they didn't emulate them. They mixed everything together. That realization gave us a lot of freedom. We used a wah-wah pedal on the album. Before, it would've been, "We don't do wah-wah pedals."Judge for yourself how the everything sounds when it's mixed together:
