Rockin' Our Turntable: The Hold Steady

By Lizz Kannenberg in Arts & Entertainment on Jul 15, 2008 4:51PM

If you pay attention to this sort of thing, you've probably heard that the new Hold Steady record, Stay Positive, sucks. I may have even been the one to tell you that, after one or two spins, but after spending some quality time with it I've changed my tune like Kid Rock with a ProTools rig.

The Hold Steady may be "America's best bar band," and leader Craig Finn is the guy you want to be trading stories with at the end of the bar. A modern-day bard for the disaffected youth and guilt-ridden victims of Catholic ideology, Finn has adapted his song-speak style and brilliant lyrical turn-of-phrase to his band's straightforward, go-get-'em song structures. Take Finn out of the equation and you have a perfectly passable, hooky, American rock and roll band. Add him to the mix and you turn the Hold Steady from a fun one-night stand into one of Finn's own complicated characters - tortured but hopeful, crass but sincere, desperate but still funny as hell.

Finn's weight-bearing mastery of being the wisest everyman you'll ever meet is what makes Stay Positive a logical, even tactical, follow-up to the their critically-lauded 2006 effort, Boys and Girls in America. First pass at Positive may leave one wondering where the "Massive Nights"-style hooks are, but they're deceptively prominent throughout the album's 14 tracks. "Sequestered in Memphis" combines a crafty, barroom-shaking piano hook with some of Finn's most wacky, smartass lyrics, including the awesome "We didn't go to her place, we went to some place where she cat sits/She said I know I look tired, but everything's fried here in Memphis."

The title track's gang-vocal chorus is certainly not original (it actually sounds a lot like Randy Newman's "I Love L.A."), but it's a solid dose of fist-pumping energy at the midpoint of the album. Part of its appeal is that it leads into the shit-kicking rock of "Magazines," a typical Finn narrative about a wayward young girl that gets a dose of grit and swagger from gravel-voiced Lucero frontman Ben Nichols.

Here's the bottom line on Stay Positive: This is not the best record of the year, and it's probably not even the best record the Hold Steady has made, but it fills a void in the often-insipid independent music world: intelligent rock music that's both accessible and challenging. And damn, that's more important than you may think.

MP3: The Hold Steady "Sequestered in Memphis"

The Hold Steady plays the Pitchfork Music Festival on Saturday, July 19.