Jesse Malin

Tough and tenacious, Jesse Malin adopts the guise of street punk turned rebellious rocker and unapologetic outcast with a raised fist and an elevated middle finger. Malin´s third album, Glitter in the Gutter, is as contradictory as its title implies a petulant set of songs that celebrate possibility even as they rail on about a seemingly endless current of obstacles and despair. On the anthemic opener, ¨Don´t Let Them Take You Down (It´s a Beautiful Day!),¨ Malin pleads ¨Hurricanes, love in vain/Murphy´s law, days of war... Don´t let them take you down.¨ It´s the initial salvo in a set that dishes out one bracing battle cry after another. Tunes like ¨In the Modern World,¨ ¨Tomorrow Tonight,¨ ¨Prisoners of Paradise,¨ and a convincing cover of the Replacements´ ¨Bastards of the Young¨ are stoked with defiance and determination like ready mantras for every poor sap who´s felt pissed upon and shoved aside. Malin enlists an edgy ensemble to help carry his torch Ryan Adams, Jakob Dylan, the Foo Fighters´ Chris Shifflet, and Josh Homme of Queens of the Stone Age but it´s his rousing duet with Bruce Springsteen on the brash, biographical ¨Broken Radio¨ that reveals his heart on his sleeve and his street cred confirmed.