Boys and girls in America (and Europe, and Canada, and Asia, and Oceania, and even the Pole, for
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30toseoul)! I promised a pimping post about
The Hold Steady [wikipedia], and here she comes.
About... four years ago I got hooked on Regina Spektor and her entire songography was on repeat on my Zune for
months. Now it's the Hold Steady, and I've actually become unable to listen to anything else without wishing it was Craig Finn's Jersey vibe and half-spoken lyrics against that 80s real-band-playing-real-instruments track. They've drawn comparisons to Springsteen and REM, the Tragically Hip and Sonic Youth, Ted Leo and even Billy Joel. They are all these things and
more, people!
Here's their one single, though I don't even know if it got radio play; the opening track from "Boys and Girls in America,"
Stuck Between Stations. Take it as a taster; if you like it, just keep rocking the fuck
on with the rest of their discography.
There are four albums so far, and while individually they're amazing, and while individual tracks on each album can also be isolated as a-fucking-mazing, there's an even
better story happening across the four albums, starring the same set of characters (Hallelujah [call her Holly] the teenage burnout, Charlemagne, the struggling drug dealer/pimp, and Gideon, the gang member -- and a whole cast of other supporting characters who get drunk at music festivals, get fucked against dumpsters behind townie bars, get in knife fights, fall in love, party till it almost kills them, and wake up in Ybor City looking for a change).
The aesthetic is set up on the first record, "Almost Killed Me," with a growling lyric-rich Craig Finn and some old-school hair band/punk guitar licks.
Then "Separation Sunday" really got the narrative ball rolling; it's entirely a concept album based around Holly, Charlemagne and Gideon, slightly rawer than the other records and still totally lyric-based and groovy.
"Boys and Girls in America" is totally the most accessible record, and where lots of fans (including me!) got started. Three years ago or so,
pene and
unwinding came to town and played me "Citrus" and "Party Pit," and I fell into this band crush headlong. Later when I went back to hear the two earlier albums I started reading the narrative and character development (as well as musical development and shifting styles), but for the first few months all I listened to was BaGiA. It's where the single (above) is from, and it busted the Hold Steady into mainstream reviewers' consciousness. Read a review
from Pitchfork Media, here.The newest record, "Stay Positive," just came out a couple months ago, and while being an album totally addressed to summer '08, is also a bookend to "Almost Killed Me," which started with the song "Positive Jam" as a band intro. "Stay Positive," after four records of some killer highs and some crushing lows, reminds us, "it's one thing to start with a positive jam; it's another thing to see it all through." I can
not stop listening to "Stay Positive," occasionally clicking back to tracks on the earlier albums just to remember how they pay off in the most recent record.
( zip file full of songs, and commentary about them, under cut )![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
