Gig review: The Gaslight Anthem at The Octagon Centre, Sheffield

“I hope you have a good show, Sheffield,” The Gaslight Anthem frontman Brian Fallon says midway through their performance, as he fiddles with his guitar. He grins and darts his tongue out. “Because if you don’t, there’s no refunds!”

Almost two decades have passed since the four-piece broke out of the New Jersey punk scene, bleeding hardcore inclinations and heartland inspirations into something nakedly intimate and propulsively communal; think The Replacements by way of The River, Bruce Springsteen’s 1980 double album.

Comparisons to The Boss are inescapable – but after his cameo on last year’s comeback History Books, they appear comfortably content with their lineage.

So too do they seem at greater ease with each other; an indefinite hiatus in 2015 came with the group close to crumpling under burnt-out pressure. Nine years later, this stop at The Octagon Centre finds them rejuvenated, squaring the line between contemplation and catharsis with an older, wiser touch.

With flyaway hair and a sandpaper croon, Fallon is no longer the livewire kid that tore up stages with a throaty roar, but instead a singer-songwriter mellowed by middle-age and fatherhood.

He and his bandmates – Alex Rosamilia, Alex Levine, and Benny Horowitz, plus tour members Ian Perkins and Bryan Haring – have always been studied purveyors of rock-and-roll confessionals; now, the wistful melancholy of their melodies and lyrics arrive with hard-earned life behind them.

Across a 90-minute-plus concert, they invest heart-on-sleeve grit and soul, delivered with the energetic looseness of an old-fashioned bar band.

Recent cuts are parsed out sparingly, though no less effectively – the striking Michigan, 1975 is an keening high – but The Gaslight Anthem are smart enough to play to the fans more than themselves; favourites like High Lonesome, We Came to Dance and The Spirit of Jazz tumble forth in freewheeling fashion, prompting punch-the-air singalongs and joyous camaraderie.

Throughout, Fallon is in garrulous form, sometimes talking a-mile-a-minute between songs. Still, after he has brought out support act Emily Wolfe for a lovely mid-set duet on Blue Jeans and White T-Shirts, he finds new gears over a terrific final half-hour, from the mid-tempo balladry of Mae through the blistering rarity of We’re Getting a Divorce, You Keep the Diner.

“Thank you, Sheffield!” he screams as a one-two punch of 45 and The ’59 Sound threatens to level the joint. There’s plenty of life to go in the second time around.