Turn the record over; we’ll see you on the flip-side…

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[4.44]

Katherine St Asaph: My initial reaction is snark — something like “you misheard, they’re not calling you the Great Depression but Hoover, because you suck.” But too many people are too into this band to be that glib, and this isn’t for me but them: guys, often, invested equally in rock mythology and angst, perhaps due to heartland stagnation or relationship claustrophobia or their exes sleeping with their best friends. (There are certain boxes these guys’ angst continually falls into, is all I’m saying; “Rollin’ and Tumblin’” ticks at least three, and as a person who has given a Nero song a [10] for ~*big relatable feelings*~ I’d be a hypocrite to deny the spear counterpart.) In theory I’m all for blustering and lone-wolfing and anthem-singing oneself out of one’s great depressions, or at least for songs about that. And “All of my friends want to get into heaven, and all I keep thinking is I wish you were here” is a great line for anyone, and it’s given the proper melodic jangle. Problem is, not enough else is.
[5]

Brad Shoup: It gets to a sweeter, more rueful place than the gritted intro would seem to predict. Craig Finn could have gotten way more mileage out of the Great Depression line, and at a loss of just 10 per cent of the rockin’. But Fallon’s working with a chunky gumbo of detail and pungent imagery. Relationships can be understood with metaphors, but they can’t be escaped with them. He can toss out all the Bruce-isms he wants, but those closing backing vocals are the real escape route. 
[6]

Danilo Bortoli: The Gaslight Anthem is a kind of rock band that struggles against its own extinction nowadays: the extremely efficient band, which is praised for creating impersonal anthems with a postcard effect in it, where songs speak to everybody but do not resonate with anyone specifically. “Rollin’ and Tumblin’” is no different: with an Alice in Wonderland reference, a Hambone Willie allusion here and there, “Rollin’ and Tumblin’” makes me want to believe that Brian Fallon is destined to write pulp fiction. Even when he’s carrying all these references and allusions, the lines present themselves with too much comfort and safety, something that suggests Fallon is using these stylistic resources just to prove he’s not recycling old formulas. And a meaningless line like “I was born on the 4th of July” exposes him: Fallon loves his idols, but he doesn’t seem to see beyond them. I know that originality shouldn’t be discussed here (since an act of creation is simply a particular vision of the world expressed by a particular being), but that doesn’t mean Brian should be forgiven for merely emulating the past in an efficient fashion. Unfortunately, his influences are just ends to themselves right now.
[3]

Anthony Easton: I like the source material here better than Jack White’s ossified nostalgia, but I like the writing worse than let’s say Okkervil River. A solid middle effort from a band who used to have more ambition. 
[4]

Edward Okulicz: Punchy and anthemic, or blustery if you’re less charitable, but weirdly empty at its core. I can totally see an alternative universe in which this does for The Gaslight Anthem what, say, “The Middle” did for Jimmy Eat World — empty punchiness sounds good on the radio. But the monster hook that would make that a lay down misere isn’t there, and the middle section blatantly sucks with too much portent and sugar atop cocaine references.
[6]

Megan Harrington: Sex, drugs, fireworks, the weekend, heaven, friends, tears, The Gaslight Anthem pack it all in and then some. All, that is, except for the rock ‘n roll. “Rollin’ and Tumblin’” is a generic bar rocker — not an absolute hindrance in the quest for sensitively tough anthems — performed in the style of a series of non-committal text messages. Every chance this band had to turn their song into something searing, they replied with “IDK.” 
[4]

Alfred Soto: “But I wanna say/my head is a weather vane” is a lyric for our times, the singer’s armpit-damp angst expected, and a rhythm section that neither rolls nor tumbles.
[4]

Micha Cavaseno: I want everyone who’s ever had the notion that singing any song by Journey or Eddie Money or Whitesnake would be just plain fun to come a little closer. No, f’real, gather round. You with the Otto Von Bismarck mustache, sailor tattoo, and rough-around-the-edges-but-a-good-guy-deep-down shtick? Sit up close, this one’s for you. You did this. You unleashed this atrocious song. I know these guys think they’re approaching some punky mix of Springsteen and Jawbreaker or something. But instead all I’m getting is alt-“I Wanna Know What Love Is.” I’m utterly dead at his consistent ad-libs, somehow making this song sound so rehearsed it undoes the strident earnestness he’s aiming for. Son just said something that sounded like him asking a woman to “shimmy shimmy shake” into his bloodstream. That line is so hokey, there are members of Poison who would read this and make some faces. Now go, my friends — and Otto? When you pick up the girl with the gauges and the snakebites, who works as a tattoo apprentice and tends to get flustered when you make animal growls after taking shots (since it’s fucking weird) for your third date? For the love of god, do not put this in your mix when you try to score. If a child was born to this song, we’d never redeem ourselves as a species.
[2]

Jonathan Bradley: Brian Fallon is too earnest to do anything so postmodern as deconstruct American masculinity, but his entire career as Gaslight Anthem frontman has been an exercise in recreating its iconography with a precision so stylised that the result is theatrical. It’s a testosterone version of Lana Del Rey’s approach to mapping gender by piecing performances together out of hand-me-down Americana and classic Hollywood catchphrases. In “Rollin’ and Tumblin’,” Fallon finds himself “born on the Fourth of July” and taking “your reds, your blues, and your cocaine.” He’s aiming to describe — or to avoid describing — an emotional chasm that can only be rendered comprehensible by placing it at the same safe distance possessed by newsreel footage of national calamity: he has a “ticker-tape heart,” he’s the “Great Depression.” As a song though, “Rollin’ and Tumblin’” is too strong and shut-up, Gary Cooper rather than Tony Soprano, uninterested in matching the breadth of the lyric’s imagery. Typical to the great narrative of American masculinity is the aging man whose youthful triumphs have long since departed him. Bruce Springsteen devoted “Glory Days” to that theme. Gaslight Anthem, acolytes of The Boss, seem sadly intent on living it out. 
[6]