'Expand' doesn't mean 'change', we're a long way from The Gaslight Anthem's EDM phase. But what does the new sound sound like? Quite nice, actually. There are effects pedals, synths, and even harmonies. There's a solemn meditation ("Underneath the Ground") on death that takes its cues from Bon Iver, of all places. The growth is unexpected but feels natural: Get Hurt shows that The Gaslight Anthem have enough confidence in their sound to use it as a foundation to leap from.

We talked with Brian Fallon on the phone about the history of bands changing their sounds, the importance of track listings, and of utmost concern, the state of his mouth.

Radio.com: Thanks for chatting with us. These media days can be long. Brian Fallon:It's not been that long of a day, actually. The worst thing that happened to me was that I went to the dentist today.

What happened? Well, I go a lot. Basically, I have to have my whole mouth restructured. For the last couple years, I've had a lot of issues with my teeth. Normal people have two or three roots in their teeth, mine have six, eight, nine. So the offshoot ones, they've never closed since I was born so they can obstructed. And when they do, it's like, your teeth start rotting from the inside and there's nothing you can do about it, you just gotta get them fixed, or get molds or implants. So today I had a root canal, like root canal number fifteen.

Oh man. It's okay, you get used to it. There are people who go through dialysis, so I have nothing to complain about�.I was thinking though, when we were doing the cover of the record, I was thinking "We should have a picture of my mouth!" because it was a state of total disarray. It was being reconstructed: holes sticking out, teeth missing, it looked really weird. So I was like, "Just take a picture of my x-ray and put that on the cover!" And everyone else was like, "No, that's a really terrible idea." And I thought, that's why I do this, that's why I'm in a band: so I don't make all these decisions by myself.

That's a helpful counter. I'll definitely say that drummer Benny Horowtiz is the best at that. He's like, "You know what, I don't wanna do that, dude. I don't wanna wear a clown suit." "But why? It's so cool, Bob Dylan painted his face! Why can't we do that?" "Because we're not Bob Dylan." "Right. Good point. Let's not do that." So I just want to give a shout out to Benjamin Horowitz right now.

You've mentioned Bon Iver as an inspiration for this album, and you can really hear that in "Underneath the Ground". I appreciate that, actually, because I feel like we didn't create that mark at all, which is cool. He's really great at what he does, sonically. Those are tender things, very delicate. When we went into do it, our other records are, you know, "raah raaah rock n' roll loud!" Those moments are tough for us to know when to put it on the record.

And "Underneath the Ground" is a song about death. Do you think that sound and that subject matter come together naturally? Yeah, I think certain songs like that - they almost tell you what they sound like before you finish it. That one started just on the piano, by itself. It was just that little riff at the beginning. I don't know, it had this weird thing. I was watching this movie where a guy was dead but he could hear people talking about him. And I was like, "Oh, that sucks! Uch. What would people say? He was such a good guy, but not really?" I think that impacts people heavily. You could be really angry at someone their whole life but then they drop dead suddenly, and you're like, time for some second thoughts there.

You researched a lot of older bands - the Stones, U2 - for this album, specifically how they made changes in their career. Can you talk about how you did that? My main thing I do, when I'm looking for any sort of inspiration, rather than listening to a certain record or reading a certain book, I watch documentaries. I love documentaries on bands. What I was looking for was, how do you take something that you built a career on, but now there's a desire to do something different than that, how do you do that without abandoning or changing what you've done in the past, without ruining it all?

So I was watching these bands that were severely developed and made great strides. Like Pink Floyd lost their singer and their primary songwriter, and they got David Gilmour and went through this whole new thing. And The Rolling Stones, they went from a blues/Top 40 band, competing with The Beatles to going to all sorts of stuff, psychedelic, disco, you name it. And U2 - U2 were a big one. I love The Joshua Tree, and I equally love Achtung Baby. They did that really well and I wanted to find out how. So I watched the documentary on Stones in Exile, I watched From the Sky Down for U2, and I was reading the Rolling Stone special on Pink Floyd. Anything I could find on this band and their process, as much as I could.