The first thing you notice about tonight's band is how stylised they are with a lot of fans sporting the skinny jeans, unshaven (and that's just the girls) and pork pie hat look and, even though the venue is as roofed as I've ever seen it in almost 30 years of going to the place, it's a very polite and kinda laid back audience. 

 
Having been caught in the Bristol traffic, which meant I missed the support band Sharks, I walked in half way through some acoustic set which totally unmoved me to the point of not even being able to remember who the guys were. All this wasn't looking good and meant that tonight I wasn't really feeling it Bristol.

Brian Fallon does indeed possess a fine set of pipes and he can bellow with the best of them and his voice is in impressive form this cold evening, it is a perfect rasp for the type of feel good Americana musical road The Gaslight Anthem are journeying down. 

Now the band amble on unassumingly and plug in and get things underway and seem very businesslike as they go about their work. I can't help but feel quite mixed emotions as I like the albums, and they have some great songs which get an airing tonight and are lapped up by the adoring masses, but I can't get out of my head that there is something missing. They strike me at times as a more 'street' Kings Of Leon or maybe an American Big Country without that one smash hit, and some of the fretwork sails a little too close to U2 and how The Edge sounds at times....but I'm trying my best to get that thought out of my head. Maybe it was just me tonight and I'm missing something. It's not that I didn't enjoy them because that would be a little fib but I just wasn't particularly moved as it seems most of the people around me leaving the venue tonight thought they'd just seen the best gig of the year and the best band in years.

They did offer value for money by playing for over an hour and a half and throwing in some unrehearsed songs which was nice but they came across as very safe and a little (dare I say it) sterile. Maybe it was the Levi's sign that they take out on tour to go above the merch stand (that urked me a little but now I'm just being picky). It will be interesting to see where they go for the next album because if it's further down the KOL road then arena tours beckon, but that surely will take them further away from being a great live band - who knows, maybe my taste indicator is off kilter and isn't on full power tonight in Bristol, but I can't help but feel a little let down by it all. Had this gig been a little rougher sounding I think the songs would benefit from that and had this been in the Thekla or the Bierkeller it would have been a better atmosphere. Good but not that good - bring on the haters, I'll have the lot of you.