When the biggest knock against you is that you’re too reminiscent of Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, your hatches are battened down and you’re running a tight little rock and roll outfit.

That’s the circumstance of The Gaslight Anthem after the New Jersey quartet released its third album, “American Slang,” earlier this summer. It doesn’t matter that the fuzzbox rhythm guitar erupting out of “Boxer” is classic Kinks; the rapid-fire couplets, spooling forth an epic blue-collar tale that cuts deeper the closer you listen, is set to a familiar heartland rock sway, and you can just picture Springsteen grinning, swinging his arms and walking cross-legged across the stage, telling that tale.

Brian Fallon, the singer-guitarist and presumed lead lyricist of The Gaslight Anthem, has that crucial breathless ingredient, that mixture of desperation for adventure and disbelief that dreams might be attainable. On the title track to the band’s 2008 album, “The ’59 Sound,” he pays tribute to those who flame out too soon, stopping the blitzkrieg of another E Street-like fusillade for a quieter bridge, yet still shouting, “Young boys/young girls/ain’t supposed to die on a Saturday night.” And yet the song is thrilled, and thrilling, for the danger of it all.

Critics have been lauding “American Slang” as a major step forward in the group’s maturation. Yes, the pace of the tunes is a little more varied, and cars and highways don’t predominate quite as much. (“Old White Lincoln” from “The ’59 Sound” even begins with the ignition of said Lincoln, driven by a guy with “high-topped sneakers and sailor tattoos.) But I really like the first two Gaslight Anthem CDs as much as the new one, in the same way that I play Tom Petty’s first couple more often than the ones with the southern gothic themes and expanded arrangements. Formulaic doesn’t mean bad if the formula is rock-solid and you knock it out of the park with all the emotions and guitar lines credibly arrayed. Despite all evidence to the contrary, some thing never grow old.

Here is the band playing “Boxer” at Bonnaroo earlier this year.

Here is “Old White Lincoln” from the same gig.

Here are Springsteen and The Gaslight Anthem sharing the stage for a rendition of “The ’59 Sound” in London last summer. Imagine this band in First Avenue tonight.

The Gaslight Anthem at First Avenue, tonight, July 26, 7:30 p.m.; tickets $22.