Handwritten Mercury***

It's a cold, hard fact that the spectres of Bruce Springsteen and Joe Strummer will forever dog The Gaslight Anthem, but the New Jersey quartet seem unfazed by that detail. After breaking through with The '59 Sound in 2008, Brian Fallon co haven't attempted to shake up their blue-collar rock'n'roll with a street-savvy snarl, and that's all well and good. Songs such as Here Comes My Man (replete with Boss-like "sha-la- las") and the brawny chug of the title track are entirely satisfactory, while National Anthem's comparatively demure acoustic musings are an unexpectedly graceful closer. Nevertheless, four albums in, with little sign of progression from fist-clenching choruses and brawny ballads, means that Handwritten sounds like just another hero-worshipping homage. Solid, but hardly stimulating. gaslightanthem.com

Download tracks:Here Comes My Man, National Anthem