Brian Fallon’s rise as a Jersey-born songwriter has drawn a lot of comparisons to the legendary Bruce Springsteen, and it’s clear at points during Fallon’s career with The Gaslight Anthem he was trying to fill those shoes a little too earnestly. Fallon’s solo career has been equally nostalgia-infused and songwriting driven, but in 2020’s Local Honey you can feel that the burden of comparison to The Boss has been fully lifted and Fallon has come into his own.
Running a tidy 31 minutes over eight songs, Local Honey is a wonderful vignette that feels intimate. In interviews Fallon has talked about how he simplified both his songwriting on staying focused on his present state as well as simplifying his instrumental approach to focus on the mood of the record, and it led to one of my favorite quotes ever (bolded emphasis mine):
On the electric side, he turned to his Telecaster and a simple setup that helped to bring the whole thing together as a single piece: a Tube Screamer, a Fulltone Solid State Tape Echo, and a 1966 Fender Deluxe Reverb amp. “You get a sound going, get a feel,” he says. “And then the instruments become characters in the record.”
– Brian Fallon to Guitar.com
Seriously love that quote, and Fallon’s thought process toward simplification certainly comes through during the entirety of Local Honey.
It’s hard to explain the joy of having children without sounding self-righteous to some degree, but as a father, the album opener “When You’re Ready” perfectly encapsulates the love that fills you to the brim watching your children grow up and the hope (and fear) you have for them as it happens before your eyes. There have been many songs about parenthood that have hit me like a ton of bricks, but listening to this song today while my oldest quite literally colors in her pajamas next to my eight month old (and remembering what it felt like to hold my oldest on my chest in the midst of a pandemic while listening to this for the first time in 2020) has forever fused this song with my heart.
There’s so many more highlights on this record– “21 Days” (a song about quitting smoking) has a rousing chorus that is almost a gospel anthem, “I Don’t Mind (If I’m With You)” perfectly walks the line between darkness and redemption, and “You Have Stolen My Heart” is probably the best constructed song on the entire album from a songwriting perspective.
But I can’t quit coming back to “Hard Feelings”, the penultimate song on Local Honey. The lyrics are incredible, the drum production sincerely sublime (panning the snare drums to left and right speakers on the double touch has stuck with me for years), and how the whole thing builds up to a solo before cutting out and letting the guitar notes overwhelm the relative silence is just simply a work of art.
Standout Songs: “Hard Feelings”, “When You’re Ready”, “I Don’t Mind (If I’m with You)”, “You Have Stolen My Heart”
