The Gaslight Anthem finally brought their History Books album tour through Boston, Massachusetts on August 18, 2024. Joyce Manor and Pinkshift were in tow for what turned into a tight, no-nonsense rock-and-roll soiree at the cavernous MGM Music Hall at Fenway.
Baltimore’s Pinkshift kicked off the evening, by my math, a couple of minutes early. I’ve made repeat mentions on these pages about how the MGM is a massive facility, but it’s not to be understated, particularly for an opening band who’s playing at a comparatively early time on a Sunday night as the crowd is filling in. Not to project, but I can imagine that might be a daunting task. That said, this marks the second time that I’ve seen a “smaller” band grab this sort of opportunity by the throat and make it their own on this very stage (the first was Grumpster opening for Jawbreaker/Joyce Manor a year ago). If you’re later to the game than I was, the core trio – Ashrita Kumar on vocals, Paul Vallejo on guitar and Myron Houngbedji on drums – formed in the halls of the prestigious Johns Hopkins University – and put their respective careers/educations on hold to make a go of the band thing. The older I get, the more infrequently I see bands for the first time whom I think feel “important.” Pinkshift feels important. With a live sound filled out by Kirby the Immortal1 on bass and Michael Stabekis on guitar, the band plowed through a 35-ish minute set that included “nothing (in my head)” and “Trust Fall” and of course their breakthrough single “i’m gonna tell my therapist on you”. Super fun stage presence, emotional and cathartic vocals, powerful – nay, punishing – hooks. What a trip.
The one-and-only Joyce Manor provided direct support on this Gaslight run. Much like they did at the aforementioned Jawbreaker show a year ago at the same venue, Joyce Manor not only came ready to play but brought a had a sizeable portion of the crowd singing along with every word from the anthemic opening notes of “Heart Tattoo” that set the tone for the rest of the set. From there, the quintet (core trio of Barry Johnson, Chase Knobbe and Matt Ebert joined by Neil Berthier on acoustic guitar and Jared Shavelson on drums for this run) blitzed through nearly two dozen songs over the course of a tight forty-five-minute set. The set was heavy on tracks from the band’s ten-year-old full-length Never Hungover Again, including the above-mentioned opener, and closer “Catalina Fight Song.” Other highlights included “House Warning Party” and “Beach Community” and of course “Constant Headache.”
At promptly 9:00pm and accompanied by the dulcet tones of Cyndi Lauper’s “Girls Just Want To Have Fun,” the Gaslight Anthem strode to the stage and immediately broke into the familiar buildup that is the intro to “American Slang.” From my vantage point in the photo pit, it sounded as though the band ground the gears of the ol’ big rig a little bit before finally getting up to cruising speed, although I’ve gone back and watched a few of the videos floating around YouTube and it seems like that might be more a result of a reverb issue at the front of the house than anything else, as they sounded dynamite from further out in the crowd. Crowd-favorite singalong “45” followed, a one-two punch that did a more than exceptional job of picking up the gauntlet that had been thrown down by Pinkshift and Joyce Manor. The last of the “photo pit three” that started the set was “We Came To Dance” from 2007’s Sink Or Swim, a song I hadn’t seen the band perform since pre-hiatus, so probably nine or ten years ago.
The setlist that followed, I have to say, was pretty great. The four History Books tracks – “I Live In The Room Above Her,” “Michigan 1975,” “The Weatherman” and “Positive Charge” fit in nicely with the comparatively deeper cuts. Much of the back catalog was well represented – although the only Get Hurt song to make an appearance was “Helter Skeleton,” a fact I thought was a little interesting given that we were just a couple days past the tenth anniversary of what is a desert island for yours truly. But I digress. Other highlights from the main set were “Bring It On” and “1930” and the Boston Bruins’ radio anthem “The Patient Ferris Wheel” and the left-right combo of “High Lonesome” and “Here’s Looking At You, Kid.” (Side note: if you haven’t read our recent interview with Benny Horowitz which talks about weaving the new tracks into a setlist of staples and also hints at the epic show closer, what are you waiting for?)
The band sounded pretty finely tuned; dare I say as good as ever. Frontman Brian Fallon’s voice had a little more growl in it than normal, a byproduct of the road (and being only 48 hours removed from a massive sold-out show on their home turf at the Stone Pony), and he was noticeably much less chatty than as has become standard. Less chatty, but no less having fun, and he frequently wore a wide smile across his face and seems genuinely happy to still be doing this with the same guys – Alex Rosamilia (not to get all “Fashion Police, but who was not only not wearing a hoodie but was wearing a sleeveless t-shirt and playing a Gibson Flying V and looked like rock and roll personified), and Benny Horowitz and Alex Levine and of course the mighty Ian Perkins and the more recent touring addition of Brian Haring – again nearly two decades down the road. Karina Rykman, who appears on the studio version of Gaslight’s cover of Billie Eilish’s “ocean eyes” joined the band on second bass (“two bass players for the price of one!) and vocals on that song and stayed out on stage in the same role for the remainder of the set. And what a remainder of the set it was: “ocean eyes” into “Mae” into “Great Expectations” into normal closer “The ‘59 Sound,” a foursome that was worth the price of admission in and of itself. But it was capped off by a return to the stage from Pinkshift, who joined Karina and the rest of the Gaslight crew for a rousing rendition of the Nirvana classic “Smells Like Teen Spirit.” It’s a song that has a different sort of cathartic energy than it did thirty years ago, less of a dangerous catharsis and more of a “hey, we’re still here and still kicking and still a vital force” catharsis.