NICOLE FREHSEE

It would be hard to find aOnline shopping more down-to-earth young rocker than Fallon, who praises his hardworking Sean Beanparents and has a very practical hobby: build¬ing homemade amplifiers. (The 59 Sound refers to a Fender Hugh Laurieamp Fallon built.) “We’re sen¬sible Jersey boys,” Fallon says. “Why blow money on a tour bus when you could get your mom a nice dress?”Seth Rogen

The Formula: We Do the Math for You
records or a no-frills take on the Replacements. That gives them a cross-generational appeal. “We get a lot of 13-year-olds who come with their dads,” Fallon says of their shows, which are intense, sweaty affairs usually capped with covers of soul clas¬sics by the likes of Ben E. King and Sam Cooke.
Fallon, 28, grew up largely in Springsteen country: The first
NEXT Solange’s sec¬ond single, “Sandcastle Disco” -a piano-and-tambourine-driven dance-floor jam – is out now. She’s also prepping a mixtape, which she will release for free online. “I sample Jay-Z, Nas and Kanye,” she says. “I’m calling it ‘I Can’t Get Clearance.’”
NICOLE FREHSEE

SideOneDummy

BRIAN FALLON, THE render some flash contentheavily tattooed front-man for the Gaslight Anthem, is hanging out in his manager’s New York office one late-summer afternoon. EmailThis is a good thing, because it meansFAQ he’s not working construction. “It’s not cool to be working on a rooftop this time of year,” Fallon says, smiling. Construction work is only part of Fallon’s blue-collar background: Having talked to his real father only once, he was raised by a grant-writer mom and a stepdad who struggled through several jobs. “I always had a sense of uncertainty grc. up,” says Falloju.
That-sjirisc of uncertainty. aVrover The ’59 Soundjthe^New Jersefy quartet’sejteeflent second album; a erjTTection of tuneful, passionately sung stories about working-class folks and young romance. One standout is the propulsive “Meet Me by the River’s Edge,” in which Fallon refers to factories and cruising dark highways. “No surrender, my Bobby Jean,” he howls on the cut, conflating two titles by Bruce Springsteen, whose shad¬ow looms over the entire record. Though the Gaslight Anthem are signed to the SoCal punk label SideOneDummy and they regularly open for mohawked acts, their sound is only sort of punk: It’s more like a super-charged version of early Bruce

Fuck Tha Police

The album’s called “Acid Tongue.” You ItJ^e to drop acid?
When I was ViewPoint14 or 15, I took acid, and it culminated Templates fromin a scene like one from Fear and Loathing in Las Recent PostsVegas – the scene where Hunter S. Thompson has to lock the lawyer in the bathroom. I was the Hunter character, be¬cause my friend decided to pull out a butcher knife and chase me around the house.
When and where do you write songs?
In line at the post office, con-venience stores, stuck in traffic … I write a lot in public rest-rooms because the acoustics are great. “Happy,” from my last album, I wrote in a bathroom.
And the name of your girl group was…
Oh, gosh. We referred to our¬selves as the Valley Girls.
Who are your country-music heroes?
The first songs I learned how to sing were by Loretta Lynn and Dolly Parton. The darker the tale, the more I was drawn to them. Songs like “D-I-V-O-R-C-E” – that one definitely appealed to me. Later, I gravitated toward the California country – Gram Parsons, Emmylou Harris, even the Eagles. They looked at the darker sides of Los Angeles.
I read somewhere that you were once a big hip-hop fan.
I was just rebelling against my mother’s record collection. I loved narratives like N.W.A’s “Straight Outta Compton” and, of course, “Fuck Tha Police.”

Love’s Way

When you were aProduct Categories baby in Vegas, your parents had a revue called “Love’s Way.” What are your memories of that?Powered
I don’t have too many, because their marriage ended and, sadly, the band broke up. My dad played MP3 Playersharmonica and my mom played bass, and they had an early drum machine. They’d play soft hits of the Seventies – the Carpenters, Sonny and Cher. Supposedly, my mom went into labor with me while onstage. My baby sitter was a female Elvis impersonator.
Sounds like a very musical childhood.
Yeah. In California, my moth¬er, sister and I had a group that would perform in our kitchen. We’d sing Barbra Streisand, Lou Reed and old country songs. I was obsessed with Annie, but no¬body would sing those with me.

Mint Chip

BECAUSE music storageOF ITS GREEN-and-brown facade, Jenny Lewis’ house in L.A. is known as Mint Chip. mix remixesNot only is Mint Chip where the singer-songwriter lays her head, it’s also where Lewis and her friends congregate tosong text jam and write. “Sometimes I have to kick people out,” says Lewis, 32, who is also the singer for indie-pop quartet Rilo Kiley but first found fame as a child actor on sitcoms and in B movies. “Things can get a little wild.” It was inside these walls that Lewis wrote her second solo album, Acid Tongue, in which she confidently delves into folk, rock and country. Lewis’ deli¬cate vocals are boosted by guest spots from a fat Rolodex of ac-quaintances that includes Zooey Deschanel, Chris Robinson and Elvis Costello, who also asked Lewis to cameo on his latest rec¬ord, Momofu\u. Harmonizing with Costello, says Lewis, “was one of the coolest moments of my entire life.”