My history with The Hold Steady is sporadic and frustrating.
Mojo magazine ranked “Your Hoodrat Friend” from Separation Sunday as one of the best punk songs of all time. I heard it. I didn’t get it.
Back in the Soulseek days EVERYBODY had that album and was talking about how great THS was. I got the entire SS album. I still didn’t get it.
In a Lost flashback Hurley was trying to ask out a girl in a convenience store on a date. He mentioned that The Hold Steady was playing.
What was I missing? I loved the name. The band was supposed to be a tossback to Springsteen and the E streeters. It should have been right up my alley.
Then the hype for their next album, Boys and Girls in America, started in earnest. This was 2006. A great year for music. And, I decided to give it a spin.
I am so glad I did.
“There are time when I think that Sal Paradise was right; Boys and girls in America…they have such a sad time together.”
The Hold Steady – Boys And Girls in America – 2006 (iTunes – Amazon)
B&GiA opens with cavernous guitars. Harmonic pianos that almost seem to be doing their own thing join them. The whole band comes in. And the epic, stadium Anthem that is “Stuck Between Stations” kicks this fucker off. Craig Finn is one terrific lyricist. He is in the running for new Rock Poet Laureate. But his voice…it’s an acquired taste, to be sure. Talk singing with a nasal quality that made me wonder at first if Jello Biafra was moonlighting as an Indie Rocker. But, it doesn’t matter, because it works.
And it’s odd. The Boardwalk rock continues on “Chips Ahoy” which, unlike anything The Boss ever wrote, 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.
In the mood for some 70s inspired rock? “Hot Soft Light”.
Need some edgy boogie rock? “Some Kooks”.
How about a reminiscent ballad about the first time you met that girl….”First Night”.
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”. Not exactly Boss lyrics, but, as edgy as Bruce was “Pouring salt upon you tongue and hung just out of reach”, so, too are the truths in Finn’s poetry.
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, Southtown Girls
BlindSide: Party Pit, Massive Nights, Citrus, Chillout Tent
DownSide: none.
So, two years later…..
The Hold Steady – Stay Positive – 2008 (iTunes – Amazon)
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? Okay…..but this time, the lyrics seem a little too precious. “Subpoenaed in Texas, sequestered in Memphis.” I can’t relate and I feel like Finn the Rhymer is replacing Finn the Poet.
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 weak and the harpsichord (huh?) battling for space with a grand piano feels crazily out of place. And whatever instrumentation they are forcing upon us on “Navy Sheets” doesn’t help this album make a good impression.
“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. 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.
If the album has any redeeming quality, and anything to offer those of us who came in with B&G, it’s the title track. I wish it had opened the record and they had spent more time working on songs like these. If they had, no doubt The Hold Steady would have burst big time in 08. And, once they get their footing, they follow with “Magazine”, “Joke about Jamaica” and the excellent epic, “Slapped Actress”, which would have made this a great EP.
If Boys and Girls was The Hold Steady’s nod to Springsteen and 70s arena rock, Stay Positive harkens back further to Zeppelin, name checkling Zep songs all the way.
But shooting for that moon and missing has just left me cold.
Grade C
A Side: Constructive Summer, Stay Positive, Slapped Actress
BlindSide: Lord I’m Discouraged, Joke About Jamaica
DownSide: One for the Cutters, Navy Sheets
