Handwritten

(Mercury)

"Where are we going with this?" always seemed the question Gaslight Anthem frontman Brian Fallon needed to address, because his band's territory had been well-trod. Popular though The '59 Sound and American Slang surely were, it is therefore good to report that Handwritten steps out from the shadow of the endorsement of The Boss to make its own way in the world. Where The Gaslight Anthem went was Nashville, to record with Brendan O'Brien, whose impressive CV includes four Springsteen albums. So not that far then. And what they made was an album with lots of mentions of cars and girls. So not so distant there, either. And yet - there is a breadth to this album that ranges from the hymn to vinyl that is lead single 45 to the altogether more epic Mulholland Drive, from the crisp two minutes of Howl to the downright heavy (as in metal) riffing of Too Much Blood. That last word recurs often, notably in the familial Keepsake, in a set of songs that may prove to be the quartet's best yet.