“Completely different than anything we had ever done before.”

That’s the description that Brian Fallon, frontman for New Jersey rock band The Gaslight Anthem, gave to Rolling Stone in regards to Get Hurt, the band’s fifth full-length studio album. In fact, in the lead up to this record, Fallon made numerous statements just like that, talking about how he and his band spent the writing and recording sessions for album number five listening to famous records where bands had changed course and gotten “weird.” For some, hearing Fallon reference U2’s Achtung Baby and how it took that band’s sound in a completely new direction was reason to become uneasy. After all, The Gaslight Anthem is a band that has made a career out of following small progressions from album to album, changing up the themes, lyrics, and song structures, but always maintaining the same core Jersey rock and roll sound. The prospect of a “weird” Gaslight Anthem album was nerve-wracking because, for many, imagining what that album could even possibly sound like was borderline impossible.