The ’59 sound
Fresh off release of new album, New Jersey rockers return from nearly decade-long hiatus to perform three songs for Saturday Sessions
Fresh off the release of the Gaslight Anthem’s new album History Books, the New Jersey rockers appeared on CBS Mornings’ Saturday Session to showcase a pair of tracks from their first LP in nine years.
For the mini-set, Brian Fallon and company performed “Autumn” and the title track, the latter sadly (and predictably) without Bruce Springsteen, who appears on the History Books version of the song. The band also dug out “Blue Jeans & White T-Shirts,” the Garden State-inspired cut from the Gaslight Anthem’s 2008 EP Señor and the Queen.
History Books, which was released Friday, arrives roughly eight years after the Gaslight Anthem went on hiatus in 2015 after wrapping up a tour in support of 2014’s Get Hurt. “We’d like to recharge and take a step back until we have something we feel excited about rather than going right back to making a record just for the sake of making the next record,” the band wrote in a statement at the time. “We all feel this is the best decision we can make and it feels like the right one for us.”
The band remerged in the summer of 2018 to celebrate the tenth anniversary of their 2008 album The ’59 Sound with a brief tour, but Fallon continued to embark on his solo career for five years (including an album of traditional Christian hymns, before reconvening in the studio, where they were joined by one of their biggest inspirations-turned-fans, Bruce Springsteen.
“When Bruce Springsteen said I should write a duet for us, I think my head exploded,” Fallon previously said in a statement. “It will never get old to me that one of the greatest songwriters in the world, and one of my hero’s voices, will forever be captured in a song I wrote at a small wooden desk, in October, in New Jersey.”