Three and half hours with The Hold Steady
I’ve espoused my love for this band before. They put out a new album this year and I was so excited that I pre-ordered on iTunes. And then kicked myself because for just a couple bucks more I could have bought the LP and it CAME with a digital download. Alas, now would be a good time to go back and listen to the band’s albums. First off, I love the opening three. And maybe I’ll like the fourth more. And then there’s the new one. Which I’ve given one listen to and I’m not really impressed. Okay. Now that we all know what I am going to do. I guess I should do it, yes?
0:00 – 43:00
Almost Killed Me – 2004
Sure, “Certain Songs” sounds like a band aping Springsteen. Even though they are song-checking Meat Loaf and Billy Joel. But that’s not the whole story of The Hold Steady’s debut. It opens with a shaggy guitar and a poetic screed that asks us at one point, that “the 80s, almost killed me, let’s not recall them oh so fondly.”
The Hold Steady’s first album has a lot of negative things to say about the go-go decade while Craig Finn spouts out about how elated he is to be in a band again.
It’s hard to get used to his speak-singing, since he sounds like Jello Biafra fronting a 70s cover band. And yet he pulls off lyrics like, “I’ve been trying to get people to call me sunny d. i’ve got the good stuff kids go for. people keep calling me five alive. because the last guy didn’t really die.”
I’m sure there are some beautiful melodies that could be written to Tad Kubler’s music but that’s not was The Hold Steady is all about. It’s about a couple guys who are really too tall for the rock and roll ride deciding to do it anyway and along the way becoming the grand-daddies of the Indie Rock movement, and one of the best bar bands in the world. It’s about a world of characters that we will return to, like Charlemagne. It’s about the love of rock and roll and telling stories and chord changes and not being too precious and being “close enough for rock and roll”. And, dammit, a sax even shows up at one point.
The thing is, THS doesn’t wanna be one of the Indie Kids. They wanna rock, dammit. They make fu of the trucker hat wearing club kids. They would probably have been more at home opening for Foreigner in 1982 than finding themselves lumped into conversations alongside The National. As Finn looks back at the “Killer Parties” which “Almost Killed Me”, I feel like I’m in good hands. Like this storyteller has a lot to say and, being that I’m too old for the ride myself, I’m sure I can relate.
I adore this record. It’s awkward and difficult to listen to and confessional as hell but worth every second.
One of my favorite debut albums ever. Took me 6 years to get to it. But it was worth it.
Grade: A
A Side: A Positive Jam, The Swish,
BlindSide: Certain Songs, Barfruit Blues, Killer Parties
DownSide:
43:00 – 1:25:00
Separation Sunday – 2005
This was one of those albums that EVERYONE had on Soulseek. I tried to listen to a couple tracks but they didn’t do anything for me. Then Mojo listed “Cattle and the Creeping Things” as one of the greatest punk songs of all time and it didn’t do anything for me. Then Hurley said to the girl in the record store “The Hold Steady is playing tonight….” And, I figured, if Lost got it and Mojo and all the Indie kids on Soulseek and I didn’t, what the fuck, right? So, I gave up.
And then I really listened.
And it’s brilliant.
We’re really following characters now. Craig, our leader. Charlemagne, the pimp, Holly also known as Halleluiah, who’s a prostitute and a drug addict and Gideon.
What the fuck Mojo was getting at makes no sense as “Cattle” is a really great rock march, a stadium anthem with a groove that would make the greatest 70s classic rock bands lick their lips with envy.
“Your Little Hoodrat Friend” is the closest they’ve come to a song you can sing along to. Finn’s weird-ass drunk poet warbling actually pulls off something amazing here: Spoken singing. It’s almost a pop song.
And lemme tell ya, rock, in all it’s great four chord glory is alive and air-guitar-licious on “Banging Camp”. And “Charlemagne in Sweatpants” is what you get when you’re a bar band who stayed up all night listening to The Rolling Stones’s Tattoo You.
Halleluiah’s redemption by the end is almost heartbreaking. The hoodrat came home. And, I think she’ll be okay.
I could go on and on, but the fact of the matter is Separation Sunday is a masterpiece. An album so steeped in religion, beat poetry and classic rock that the only way to really appreciate it is to set aside about 45 minutes and get into it.
Grade: A+
A Side: Cattle and the Creeping Things, Your Little Hoodrat Friend, Chicago Seemed Tired last Night, How a Ressurection Really Feels
BlindSide: Hornets! Hornets!, Banging Camp, Charlemagne in Sweatpants, Stevie Nix, Multitude of Casualties
1:25:00 – 2:05:00
Boys And Girls in America – 2006
On Boys and Girls Keyboardist Franz Nicolai is given a helluva lot to do. He’s playing Roy Bittan to Finn’s Springsteen. And he brings melody to “Stuck Between Stations”. One of the best tracks in the band’s career. A song you can sing along with. Actually, a lot of B&GiA is comprised of more songs than the spoken word set to rock of the earlier THS stuff. But the characters are back. Gideon, Charlemagne, Holly…well, she’s in the hospital not far from the bar where we all met on that “First Night”.
“Chips Ahoy” is about a guy whose girlfriend is psychic and she doesn’t have to work because she always knows which horse is going to win at the racetrack. But, it could be about Saturday night at the roller rink for all we care. It’s just grand.
This is the record where it all comes together. The soaring guitars, the poetry, the stadium rock posing as an Indie Band.
In the mood for some 70s inspired rock? “Hot Soft Light”.
Need some edgy boogie rock? “Some Kooks”.
One of my personal favorites (heck, they’re all terrific) is Party Pit. If you’ve ever been to a bonfire with beer buckets and stoners in the woods, you know this place. “Just gonna walk around and drink some more.” is the perfect sentiment to those aimless late nights. This is not just an album about partying. It’s about being at the party. And it’s not an Andrew W.K. kind of PARTY!!!. It’s a chaperoned, glee-filled, spiked punch party.
“Citrus” calls to mind the acoustic balladeering of Zeppelin. Though, I’m not sure they were singing an ode to alcohol. But with such pinpoint accuracy and deft wordplay…Example:
hey citrus
hey liquor
I love it when when you touch each other
hey whiskey
hey ginger
I come to you with rigid fingers.
i see judas in the hard eyes of the boys working the corners.
i feel jesus in the clumsiness of young and awkward lovers.
After you’ve gotten a little too high you might need some time in the “Chillout Tent”. Craig’s story of two kids who get way too high on E (probably), find themselves in that Chillout Tent, make out and never see each other again, is a hopeless but too true commentary on the rave lifestyle. Neither seem too fazed by the experience. But the millenials are sort of inured to those kinds anyway.
The album closes with the ready-made classic “Southtown Girls”. With it’s lazy, faux country sensibilities, it’s the perfect coda to a grand 40 minutes.
I can’t recommend this record higher.
Grade A+
A Side: Stuck Between Stations, Chips Ahoy, First Night, Southtown Girls
BlindSide: Party Pit, Massive Nights, Citrus, Chillout Tent
DownSide: none.
2:05:00 – 2:49:00
Stay Positive – 2008
When the band backs up Finn, yelling out, “This Summer!” on the opening track, “Constructive Summer”, I can hear Black Flag’s “TV Party” and, it makes me happy. They haven’t really forgotten their punk roots, The Hold Stead. Name checking Joe Strummer isn’t a bad idea, either.
“Constructive Summer” is actually the right progression for the band. It’s a bold melding of the Separation Sunday THS and the Boy and Girls one.
In no time they are reminding us of why we loved that last album with the first single, “Sequestered in Memphis”. That organ, though. They are bringing out the kitchen sink and feeling their E-streetiness. Saxophones? This time the story is matched by rhymes and choruses which, at first, seem out of place and I don’t know why. And then I realize: that’s not what The Hold Steady does. Songs? Rhymes schemes? Sing along choruses? Maybe on their covers and rarities. It’s a step in the absolute right direction.
“One for the Cutters” continues the “local townies” aesthetic that helped rise the previous record to new heights (this time calling to mind the 70s film, Breaking Away), but it’s weakened by the harpsichord (huh?) battling for space with a grand piano feels crazily out of place. I applaud the attempt to expand and give Nicolau free reign but it’s very disconcerting.
And whatever instrumentation they are forcing upon us on “Navy Sheets” doesn’t help this album make a good impression. New Wave synths have no place on a Hold Steady record. Kind of makes me wonder if Kubler and the guys are running out of ideas.
“Lord, I’m Discouraged” feels like the sort of sleepy, anthem ballad that the guys can write in their sleep. It works. It’s not surprising, it doesn’t jolt you, but it works. It recalls some of the best meandering stadium ballads of the 70s with a soaringly eligiac solo at the 3:20 mark that will have you reaching for a lighter.
And the dustbowl, almost Jovi-esque, “Both Crosses” can’t quite the mustard. This time, it’s because heavy echo won’t mask the fact that Craig Finn isn’t a singer. And yet, he’s trying something more than spoken word. He’s trying to wrap his larynx around this idiom. He fails and it’s not spectacular.
The album gets itself back on track with the title track. A big “woah-oh-oh-oh” song that chunks and moves and explodes into an aural depiction of the previous album’s cover art. Once they get their footing, they follow with “Magazine”, “Joke about Jamaica” and the excellent epic, “Slapped Actress”.
If Boys and Girls was The Hold Steady’s nod to Springsteen and 70s arena rock, Stay Positive shows the band expanding it’s musical palette and trying to avoid pigeonholing and redundancy.
But shooting for that moon they just miss and the resulting record is a hodgepodge.
Grade B- (This rating has changed a bit since the DoubleShot from last year. I think the record is slightly better than I originally thought. It could have just been expectations, since Boys and Girls was so wonderful they couldn’t have done anything but come down from there)
A Side: Constructive Summer, Sequestered in Memphis, Stay Positive, Slapped Actress
BlindSide: Lord I’m Discouraged, Joke About Jamaica
DownSide: One for the Cutters, Navy Sheets, Both Crosses
2:49:00 – 3:30:00
Heaven is Whenever – 2010
1.The Sweet Part of the City – Why is Finn mixed so far back? It’s interesting to listen to this right after hearing Sticky Fingers. If the earlier Hold Steady records were Springsteen and the later ones Zeppeling, this is starting off sounding like the Stones. It’s a languid piece. Not how I would start off a record but I’m not in a band anymore. I’m going to infer from the last line “We were bored so we started a band. We’d like to play for you.” that this is a reminiscence of humble beginnings. Different than the band that wrote “A Positive Rage”.
2.Soft in the Center – A single! A pop song! It feels like the band has decided that poet-of-the-street is fine and all but wouldn’t it be great to, I dunno, sell some records? The only problem is that the production really stinks.
3.The Weekenders – Wow. So, we’re revisiting the duo from “Chips Ahoy”. Okay, Finn has done this a lot. He’s got a notebook of characters. This story, however, doesn’t really take us any further. I wonder if it’s just easier to write great stories when you’re holed up in a dank apartment in Brooklyn than to write on a tour bus.
4.The Smidge – More cowbell! And that other rattley percussion instrument. You know, the one with a stick that you run up and down grooves. I don’t know what it is. But it’s here.
5.Rock Problems – Is it The Ramones? Sure, they’ve ripped about everyone else off. Might as well put the basic melody of “Chips Ahoy” over a Ramones-y chukka-chukka bed. It’s an hollow tune. Wow. When did I become a Hold Steady hater?
6.We Can Get Together – Finn has dropped Meat Loaf titles in songs before. Here he’s name checking Husker Du and Utopia as well. But, I’m bored. I’ve been here before. These nameless “he’s” and “She’s” are tiring. I miss Charlemagne and Halleluiah and even Gideon. This is treacly and mawkish and I kind of hate it.
7. Hurricane J – Oh. Here’s a character. Jessie. Let’s see what this is about. It’s really lackluster. I want so badly to give a shit about this character or this song but I don’t.
8.Barely Breathing – Don’t sing, Craig. Don’t sing over some forbrush-y vaudeville guitar. Don’t sing over a back beat swing. Ever. EVER!
9.Our Whole Lives – By now I feel like the band is just uninspired and are realizing that it’s been 2 years since they released an album. Maybe I would like this if I had never heard the 1st three albums. But I did and they need to do better.
10.A Slight Discomfort – An awful, uninspired, aimless, directionless, useless piece of poorly recorded shit.
Wow. Is the gleam this far off the rose? Three amazing records, one mediocre and one disaster. In that order. It’s going to be hard to recover from this. And I don’t know if I will be there when they try.
Grade: D+
A Side: The Sweet Part of the City
BlindSide: Soft in the Center
DownSide: The Smidge, Heaven in Whenever
