Against Me!ʼs Laura Jane Grace will be releasing her memoir, Tranny: Confessions of Punk Rock’s Most Infamous Anarchist Sellout, on November 15th. Pre-orders are already up at Amazon.
Read More “Laura Jane Grace Announces Book Title and Release Date”
There aren’t many people in music right now who are under more pressure than Brian Fallon. Labeled as the torchbearer of the classic rock tradition upon the release of 2008’s The ’59 Sound—the sophomore album from his Jersey-based quartet, The Gaslight Anthem—Fallon has spent the better part of his career not just having to live up to the quality of his own albums and songs, but to his idols as well. A lot of people got into Bruce Springsteen, Tom Petty, and Bob Dylan after hearing consistent references to each in Gaslight’s early music. In fact, Gaslight’s legacy got so entwined in the “inspired by Springsteen” narrative that fans started requesting Bruce songs at shows. Even Fallon’s side project, the Horrible Crowes, got whipped up in the Springsteen tornado, drawing at least a handful of parallels to Nebraska. Let’s be honest: figuring out a way to live up to an album as terrific as The ’59 Sound is hard enough. Doing it when everyone is comparing your stuff to albums like Born to Run and Damn the Torpedoes is just downright unfair.
On this week’s episode of Encore we start by talking a little about the Academy Awards, do some follow-up on last weeks “best 10 albums of the last 15 years,” and then tackle some reader questions. Thomas recounts his history with Set Your Goals, we give some updated thoughts on The Wonder Years’ last album, and we look at how we’ve changed or matured how we handle conversations on the forums. We talk a bit about “where to start” with different forms of art by well known musicians or authors or filmmakers and then get into some of the big news over the last week: Transit have broken up, Yellowcard are back with Hopeless, and The Hotelier have released the track listing and album art for their new album. We end with some talk of Rolling Stone’s top 40 emo albums and The 1975 aiming for that number one spot on two charts. And there’s the return of the siren. Rejoice.