The last time the Gaslight Anthem played Baltimore, they headlined the Recher Theatre in support of their breakthrough 2008 album The ‘59 Sound, and enthusiasm was high for the fast rising New Jersey quartet. And when they returned on September 28th, it was with a new album, American Slang, at a bigger venue, Rams Head Live, and if anything the crowd was even more wound up. In fact, they may have been almost too excited; the audience frequently tried to clap along with the beat, only to get way ahead of the pace set by drummer Benny Horowitz, and sang along with every word of even newer songs like “The Diamond Street Church Choir” or obscure ones like the non-album cut “Blue Jeans & White T-Shirts.”

Fortunately, the Gaslight Anthem are a band that knows how to feed off that kind of energy and let it spur them forward, true to the ‘punk Springsteen’ angle of their sound and image. They leaned into the big singalong moments, stretched out the quiet breakdowns, and let the audience hold their breath before leaping back into the choruses. They played their best known singles, the title tracks from The ‘59 Sound and American Slang, back to back halfway through their set, but it didn’t feel like they’d given them up too early, since so many of their songs got just as big a reaction later on.

Frontman Brian Fallon seems to be coming into his own and finding a certain rockstar swagger, even letting a guitar tech take over on guitar for a couple songs so that he could focus on just singing, although he couldn’t resist awkwardly playing a little air guitar at one point. Fallon’s lyrics are stuffed full of allusions to 20th century Americana and quotes from his musical heroes, and at one point he even sang a few bars of Thin Lizzy’s “The Boys Are Back In Town” as an intro to a Gaslight song.

Although they frequently spotlighted songs from American Slang and their 2007 debut Sink Or Swim, the band clearly knew that The ‘59 Sound was the album that gained them most of their fans, and played nearly every song off it over the course of the evening. And when they returned for an encore, they ended it with the same 1-2 punch as that album, “Here’s Looking At You, Kid” and “The Backseat.” The Gaslight Anthem are kind of a one-dimensional band; all their songs mine the same kind of nostalgic imagery, and the closing pair of songs demonstrated their two dominant musical modes: midtempo and wistful, or driving and anthemic. That schtick might get old at some point and the shows might get less thrilling than the one that night, but it seems like the fanbase they’re building right now will be ready to go sing and clap along with them for years and years.

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