The Gaslight Anthem, “Handwritten” (Mercury/Island Def Jam)
The Gaslight Anthem has always occupied this unsettling space between the earnestness of Bruce Springsteen’s lyricism and the musical passion of harder-edged bands like Jawbox. The former is no surprise, given the quartet’s New Jersey Roots and the latter — well, this is a band that bounds back and forth across the line between punk and folk with no apologies.
Nor should it.
On its fourth studio album, the appropriately titled “Handwritten,” Gaslight Anthem offers up plenty of material that is rich in texture and layered in its subtexts about love, longing and losing that careens from composed whispers to impassioned pleas.

In a way, the 11 tracks — starting with the sublime “45” — evoke the band’s prior recordings of stories blending hope, redemption, memories and regret. But there’s a more adult air infusing the 11 songs.
The Gaslight Anthem has fashioned a sturdy major label debut that more than pays homage to its upbringing while, at the same time, shows off a maturity gleaned from so much time playing on the road and a cohesion that is remarkable.
Check this track out: The splintering and howling title track is like a scornful letter about love and loss yet with a U-turn that transforms it from a clichéd story about couples meeting later in life to something grander and, at its core, hopeful.


Passion Pit, “Gossamer” (Columbia Records)
From their achingly hip EP “Chunk of Change” to their 2010 follow-up “Manners,” anticipation has been turbo-charged for another pitch-perfect, electro-pop album from Passion Pit.
And their latest, “Gossamer,” hits all the right notes. The band keeps exploring the themes of hipster life — intoxication, love lost and hopelessness sung in their beautiful, uncontrived manner. Opening track and first single “Take A Walk” is a rousing festival anthem that you could easily imagine a beer-tinged audience chanting its chorus.
“I’ll Be Alright” blasts with a weighty beat and “Mirrored Sea” sounds like a definite dance-floor hit. Then there’s the electro synth-heavy “Cry Like a Ghost,” which muses on excessive drinking.
Overall, the Massachusetts-based band has a created an album that is melodically upbeat and lyrically melancholy. And it works.
Check this track out: “Love Is Greed” questions young love with lamenting strings.


Kobalt Music Group Ltd, an upstart music publisher that is now one of the world’s biggest, said Tuesday that it will manage the copyrights of Paul McCartney’s post-Beatles songs such as “Ebony and Ivory” and “Band on the Run” along with works managed by McCartney’s MPL Communications group outside of North America and the UK.
The deal marks a break for McCartney from EMI, which was acquired for $2.2 billion by a group of investors led by Sony/ATV last month, making it the world’s biggest music publisher.
The move ensures different managers for McCartney’s Beatles and non-Beatles hits in markets not already served by MPL.
It also represents the growing popularity of Kobalt among artists.

According to Billboard magazine, Kobalt increased its share of publishing revenue from the top 100 U.S. radio hits to 15.5 percent in the third quarter of 2011, up from less than 5 percent three years earlier. That ranked it second behind only EMI, which had 17.9 percent at the time.
Kobalt says it pays songwriters about 25 percent more than other publishers because of its streamlined structure and better tracking of song plays around the world.
“We have grown by delivering service, quality, and results to our clients. We have not bought our growth. We have earned it,” said Kobalt CEO and founder Willard Ahdritz in an interview. (AP)