Get Hurt, the 2014 album from The Gaslight Anthem, tries to burn down a reputation built on rock full of open feeling and long tied to a famous artist in the genre. Twelve tracks, 41 minutes, thicker guitars, smoother production, and a title track that works as a mission statement. The record is a band reaching hard for change without fully landing the effect.
A New Approach
Get Hurt sounds different from anything the band put out before. The guitars are thicker, the mix smoother, and the beat hits with a mechanical push that owes more to modern rock radio than to New Jersey bar bands. That change is the whole point of the record.
Whether it works depends entirely on the song underneath the sound.
Track by Track
- Stay Vicious opens the album with plenty of attitude and a forceful sound, showing right away that this is not the band’s old approach.
- 1,000 Years follows with a keener hook, one of the tracks that reviewers singled out as proof the new approach could still carry a song.
- Get Hurt, the title track, is the heart of the record. The singer pushes his voice into more open, exposed ground, and it’s the song most reviews pointed to as the album’s high point.
- Stray Paper and Helter Skeleton keep the tempo moving but do not add much new; they are adequate rather than striking.
Then the record runs into a rough patch.
- Underneath the Ground goes on past four minutes, the album’s longest cut, but the extra length does not turn into extra weight.
- Rollin’ and Tumblin’ and Red Violins sit in the back half of the record without leaving much of a mark, steady tracks that keep the sequence moving.
- Selected Poems and the track that follows it, about a shame that will not pass, continue the same trend — competent, easy to forget, the kind of songs that fill space between the ones people will actually remember.
The record picks back up near the end.
- Break Your Heart brings the album back into focus. Running 4:20, it’s one of the tracks singled out by reviewers, and it shows the band can still write something that lands even inside this new, harder shell.
- Dark Places closes the record at 3:45, a fitting, quiet ending that does not settle the strain between the band’s old identity and its new one.
What the Reviews Said
The reviews split hard. Metacritic put Get Hurt at 62 out of 100, filing it as “generally favorable” even as individual reviews moved in opposite directions. Pitchfork wrote that the band is defined almost entirely by its connection to a well-known figure in rock history it has long been compared to.
One review took the opposite view, arguing that caring about something, even without polish, is always worth paying attention to. Another review landed in between, saying the album falls short of the major, important record its artist had promised.
The Difference Between the Reviews
That distance between a harsh score and a glowing one is not an accident. It is the sound of two different audiences hearing two different records — one group missing the band Gaslight Anthem used to be, the other giving them credit for trying to become something else.
The Verdict
Get Hurt is not a failure, and it is not a triumph. It’s a band in the middle of change, and change is rough by nature.
The title track, Stay Vicious, 1,000 Years, and Break Your Heart justify the attempt. The run of songs in the middle — Stray Paper through the track about shame that will not pass — does not.
The record was promised as something bigger than it turned out to be. What came out is bold in aim and rough in delivery, generally favorable on paper and split right down the middle in practice.
Score: 62 out of 100.
- Stay Vicious3:34
- 1,000 Years3:39
- Get Hurt3:43
- Stray Paper2:49
- Helter Skeleton3:14
- Underneath the Ground4:06
- Rollin’ and Tumblin’2:51
- Red Violins3:21
- Selected Poems2:53
- Ain’t That a Shame3:03
- Break Your Heart4:20
- Dark Places3:45
