Every Hold Steady song is pretty much the same: a man caught the wrong side of 30 hollers “Remember that one crazy broad from last summer?” over the sound of a bar band trying to discover the mid-point between The Replacements and John Cougar Mellencamp. Someone gets drunk, someone else gets high, lather rinse repeat.
Every Hold Steady album is pretty much the same as well. It must be deliberate. I’m not talking about the constant callbacks to other albums (observant HS fans will notice the repeated use of the lines “There’s gonna come a time when she’s gonna have to go with whoever’s gonna get her the highest” and “When the chaperone crowned us the king and the queen” on here). No, I mean the way that they frontload the shit out of their LPs, so on first listen you assume that they’ve finally blew it and dropped off one-third of the way through.
Like on here, like on every other album they’ve ever released, the singles are early doors. So here, in the ‘Chips Ahoy!’ / ‘Cattle and the Creeping Things’ spots, you’ve got ‘Constructive Summer’ and ‘Sequestered In Memphis’. The former seems to be a deliberate nod to those who just go “Springsteen” when they listen to HS and refuse to develop any further thoughts on the matter, a ‘Darkness On The Edge of Town’-esque driving anthem dedicated to the joys of getting fucked up in your youth: “Me and my friends are like / The drums on ‘Lust For Life’ / We pound it out on floor toms / Our psalms are sing-along songs”, complete with John Bender middle-eight denunciation of the “grey walls” of detention. The latter is classic HS, insistent bar rock with, yep, one of those damn crazy broads that keep making the band’s life such a misery (“In bar light she looked alright / In day light, she looked desperate”).
And then it seems to drop off. And this is why you don’t like The Hold Steady, not just because you’re a damn simpleton, not just because you enjoy the empty thrill of false innovation over the sound of a band perfecting one solitary genre, not just because to you ‘drinking music’ should be the vomit-on-Yates’s-carpet mitherings of The fucking Pigeon Detectives or whoever. No. It’s because you’re too lazy to put the hours in. More fool you.
The album is unlocked by the title track. The big line about this album is that it’s about Growing Up, as if the band were just providing the soundtrack to Boys Meets World or something. It isn’t. It is an album about dealing with dealing with growing up. Follow? Look at it this way: for around a decade now, rap music has been desperately trying to work out what its 35-year-olds can do. They’ve had two options, either the “Get off my damn lawn” hectoring of Ice-T and KRS-One, or ‘Kingdom Come’’s unique branch of “Exactly the same fucking songs as before, except now in a blazer” steez. Finn, word to Anthony Charles Lynton, has found a third way. He’s playing the role of scene elder who isn’t 100 per cent comfortable with what’s going on these days, but knows he’d be an utter fool to fight it. Yeah, the scene is “too druggy”, yeah the kids are “too skinny”, but there’s still anthems to drop and the album is about the joys you can find alongside the grind.
What else is there? ‘One For The Cutters’ drags a harpsichord into the mix to tell a tale of a girl so dangerous she even “parties with townies”, over what sounds a little like the music from a Edwardian dance party. ‘Joke About Jamaica’ takes a fantastic opening line (“They used to thing it was so cute when she said ‘Dire maker?’ / All the boys knew it was a joke about Jamaica / She’d always find a ride back home from the bar”) and goes on to tell that depressing story of a groupie slowly losing her looks and her reason to live, a similar tale to album closer ‘Slapped Actress’, a retelling of the John Cassavetes movie Opening Night, in which Gena Rowlands plays an actress who realises that with age comes ugliness.
And there is, yes, an argument to be made here that The Hold Steady are misogynistic, that the guys on this album find great wisdom with age while the chicks just get crow’s feet, but that’s too simplistic. The story of The Hold Steady has always been, from day dot, a celebration of actually getting up and getting angry and doing stuff, which is why on every single album the guys getting drunk are having a whale of a time and the dudes getting stoned are at rock bottom. Aggression versus acceptance.
It’s just a Hold Steady album at the end of it. They’ve never let us down so far, and they’re not liable to do it any time soon. They turn critics into gibbering wrecks unable to write proper reviews and leave us forced to just string together our favourite lyrics like a damn teenage girl scribbles Tokio Hotel choruses onto her bed headboard. But, y’know. Hairier.
So that’s Stay Positive then. An album that, like The Hold Steady themselves, is some straight-up grown man shit.
Literally
100% absolutely fucking correct.
Everyone's fave track?
I'm thinking "Yeah Sapphire" at this point
yay
that's all.
<3
probably my favourite band IN THE WHOLE WORLD right now.
also
'They turn critics into gibbering wrecks unable to write proper reviews and leave us forced to just string together our favourite lyrics'
:D
i think it's just the manics fan in me but there's something SO appealing about bands whose lyrics are endlessly quoteable. thankfully this LP looks to continue this trend.
"i guess i heard about original sin. i heard the dude blamed the chick. i heard the chick blamed the snake. i heard they were naked when they got busted. i heard things ain't been the same since."
amazing quote
god I love this album
The Hold Steady
can do no wrong.
Excellent review Mr Passantino, as ever.
***Stands and applauds***
I can't fathom their appeal
maybe I am lazy, but I've heard their records and seen them live and far from sounding anything like the replacements or hüsker dü (both bands I love) or even springsteen (I'm no fan but can appreciate his stuff) they just sound like bruce hornsby and the range to me
then again, I always thought whiskeytown sounded like deacon blue
i cant wait to get this
all i needs is the moneyz :(
Dissapointing album
Not any really strong tracks in my opinion. Shame as they can be sooo good.
I genuinely don't get their appeal.
To these (un?)trained ears, it sounds like a Bruce Springsteen record.
Hmm, I might persevere...
^^^
you said it.
Yes Yes! Yes! Dear God Yes!
that is all.
preferred
the dan le sac vs scroobius pip album
awesome
record. High fives all round.
with all due respect...
this record is quite boring in many ways. "Stay Positive" is a dull title and a conservative version of testosterone-driven, american mainstream rock. This album has an obvious lack of great songs and melodies. As i got my promo copy I was full of expectations. I read what Allan Jones had to say in his 5-star-review in Uncut; I realized the high ratings in Mojo and elsewhere. Oh me, oh my, thanks and good-bye. For example, albums like "The Allman Brothers Band Live at Fillmore East", Bruce Springsteen´s "Ghost Of Tom Joad", Emmylou Harris´ "Wreckin´Ball" (to quoet some archetypal Americana) go so much deeper. Trust your own ears only, that´s the lesson to learn here!
^^ what they said ^^
..
If you're gonna be a simple bar band
may as well be the best bar band ever.
How come
this band have got away with building a whole career around Departure by REM?
Staid tripe.
2/10
a sigh of relief
I´m not the only one who´s not blown away by this!:)
Probably my least favourite album of their's
well apart from maybe almost killed me, but still good fun happy to see that DIS have nearly redeemed themselves after that review of chips ahoy... http://www.drownedinsound.com/release/view/8501
Good review.
Looking forward to hearing this now!
I heard this was a bit gash compared to their other stuff,
but apparently not.
I'm still gonna be listening with sceptical ears. This is pretty much the only overwhelmingly positive review I've read.
I take that back...
may i ask which reviews you have been reading please?
album of the month no less in uncut, mojo and q magazines, and also, hot off the press, 8.4 on pitchfork
such a dads band
for dads who wear dads pants.
Don't get these at all.
Why is it that just because a band is dull as dishwater but American they're excused from being lumped in with the rest of the lumpen dad-rock average white bands they so obviously aspire to?
I can't help but agree.
If other bands - naming no names - had produced this they'd be coralled into the old timers penn with a quick brush off and few good words.
Anyone who doesn't like The Hold Steady........
is an oxygen thief cunt who deserves to be stabbicised, set on fire, put out, stabbicised again, beaten to death with their own shoes, buried, dug up, set on fire again and then have their ashes scattered across a selection of multi-storey carparks in the Luton area.
I'm sorry, but there's really no nice way of saying it.
^ Jah! Mein Furher, Jah Wohl Herr Alex-In-Ciderland!
What happened to freedom of choice you silly twat? Anyway I was going to say I've always found the Hold Steady to be an FM friendly College rock band somewhere between Deacon Blue, Hooty and The Blowfish and Bruce Springsteen (I am a Springsteen fan) but on the back of everyone telling me how good this record is, I am willing to give them another try.
What happened to tongues in cheek
you silly fucktard.
P.S None of those bands/artists you mentioned are in any way typical of 'College Rock'
sorry Herr Ciderland
me not understand English you right, me stupid. duh meesa boogie talkin bout Hooty and Deacon Blue to emphasise how bland Hold Steady is.
Johnny Zaza
That´s a wittone:) - my comment was of course directed to this Ciderland idiot and his redneck fantasies!
You're a dull little flange, aren't you?
My post was in jest.
You must be a wow at parties!
x x x
wow!
I´m really a wow at parties - ask Mandy Lane!
Apology accepted ; )
If you were meaning to draw parallels between THS and 'bland' recording artists, why on earth did you use the term 'College Rock'?
I can only concluded that you have no idea what the term actually means.
Get yourself to Wikipedia then get fucked, preferably in that order.
Glad to see that the sense of humour bypass was a success.
This would still be infinitely
more appealling than being subjected to an entire Hold Steady album in one sitting Mr Ciderland.
I see!
you are obviously a great spirit, a specialist in empathy and tolerance.
Great review
with a fairly well choreographed twist.
Still going through the album the first couple of times, but it seems like it's back to the slightly darker themes of the second record - which I'm all in favour of.
Not sure about the track with the Bon Jovi guitar solo on it though...
they were dead good
at HMV today, too.
raise a toast to saint joe strummer
i think he might have been our only decent teacher..
brilliant line, brilliant album, brilliant band.
You're not serious?
That line makes me want to rip my ears off.
On the whole, it's a good album. But a 9?
NO.
It was an EIGHT yesterday
Why has the score been raised overnight?
Oh Christ this record is good
If you don't like it then i don't like you.
Aside from the fact that The Hold Steady are one of the best rock n roll bands on the planet, there is another simple thing that makes this record great:
Ben Nichols from Lucero singing on any track > > > > > > > anyone else doing anything else in the world.
I fucking love this record
And I am not a dad. I am not even old. And I do not drink or drug and I hate classic rock but I love Craig Finn's lyrics and I love The Hold Steady and I fucking love this record.
Dom got it right.
.
Absolutely fantastic piece of writing.
Like all HS albums it's taken me a few listens to actually get properly into it - the harpsichord cut through me like a dentist's drill on first listen, but it just so obviously belongs there now.
YES
Absolutely my thoughts on the matter, and I would totally agree with the title track as the key to the album. That's what naming albums is supposed to entail though right... y'know, like effort. Some kind of understanding of the themes and unifying message of your material.
I love that uncertainty, no fascist sense of there only ever being one answer. But a - and some may argue it cowardly - total sense of submission. I love that in Finn's lyrics, that sense of knowing something but not having the words to express it, nor even comprehend it... and maybe it's just me being liberal (cue all the self righteous retorts) but i'm much more comfortable mediating than clutching at straws.
Anyway, thematics aside, or not - popular music fans have an incredible capacity for ignoring the base <b>musical</b> progression of their medium - Stay Positive plays host to more guitar sounds than any of the Hold Steady's previous. The limp 12 string on Lord I'm Discouraged, the awesome crunch on Slapped Actress etc..
Anyway my point is... I don't see the arguments against this album. Popular music is all about repetition, same cadences, progressions, song forms BLAH. Stay Positive is, in this respect, no different. However its remarkably true to the Hold Steady, to its fans and to its own ethos.
In a word: Integrity.
Right!
Its all about repetition, cadences, progressions´etc - but these are, i.m.o., no good songs.
No good songs.
Fair enough, it's all opinion at the end of the day, a band either strikes a chord with you or they don't.
I assume 'songs' is meant in the lyrical sense? Please expand... (srsly no srcsm ntnded) I'm intrigued.
nb:
As for mortal peril...(later post) maybe that's it, but then maybe that would also be music in the wake of mortal peril, 'straight up man shit' equally so. That there would probably be an incendiary comment typified by reviewers with masculinity complexes.
brilliant reivew
thats all
OH
I thought that was a negative review
I love this band
but this album is not a 8 or nine out of ten. It's a five or six at best. Compare it to any other of their records, and it pales in comparison. And that's hard to say, because I love the Hold Steady.
phew
i was worried by the first four or five comments all giving overwhelming praise for this tripe
it's AMAZING MUSIC
to people who go to Infernos
Infernos?
you mean grill parties?!
Infernos
YAH YAH
i read the quote
"Every Hold Steady song is pretty much the same: a man caught the wrong side of 30 hollers “Remember that one crazy broad from last summer?” over the sound of a bar band trying to discover the mid-point between The Replacements and John Cougar Mellencamp"
and thought it was going to be 1/10
I guess that's a good thing? to me this band is my least favorite band making music at the moment
1/20
alrighty is right
exactly
allright is really right; his "mid-point" is a very good description os the area of sound the band fills up with in a poorly inspired way. When i read the 5-star-description of Allan Jones in "Uncut", I thought, wow, that must be a hell of a thing. This seems to be consensus rock.
seriously WTF
this is the worst review
"So that’s Stay Positive then. An album that, like The Hold Steady themselves, is some straight-up grown man shit."
that is the dumbest most obnoxious final quote ever.
this review and band need to be burned
I have never heard of these dudes before
but hell you lot seem to like them.....
So I go over to myspace and they are kinda bland old blokes pub band. Some of it reminds me of Oasis and Coldplay with a smokey bar room county vibe to it. If I was pissed ata festival they might be alright but most of the time I'm not.
Whats going on with you lot?
straight up grown man shit
How old are you? That sounds like a uni student playing at being adult. Have you just stumbled across Bukowski, Steinbeck and Hemingway? Are you worried about how you can ever truly call yourself a man if you've never been in mortal peril?
Which is what The Hold Steady sound like.
Neurosis and PMFS are much more mature than HS, and they're not "grown man shit" either.
i don't hate them
and any couple of their songs is fine
but they all sound exactly the same
you can sing any one of their songs over any one of their backing tracks
d
u l
l
ok i have come back after giving them another try
and they are definitely somewhere between Mellencamp, Hootey and The Blowfish, Deacon Blue and Fountains Of Wayne. They are as Dad Rock as Ocean Colour Scene, Cast and Oasis and they only reason why they aren't lumped in with this lot cos they are Yanks. 9/10 i dont think so!!!
Recycling
There is, I think, a great need - on the side of conservative journalists - to create new myths and new classics. Don´t forget "Dad Rock" has created some milestones in rock music, but this is a quite overestimated recycling of old role models.
I think it is a reasonable album
and would give it a 7/10 (which is slightly above average and equates to a DiS 9/10, so we agree there)
But am I th only one who finds the lyrics cringeworthy? A man in his 30's pretending to be 16
Big fat meh
I've seen them twice now and I've finally come to the conclusion that I just don't like them.
I hear one song and think, yeah that's pretty good but by the time I've heard the second or third, I'm bored. They just don't grab me in any way.
Judging by the crowd at the Irish Centre last week they also have the nerdiest fanbase in music :o) one guy was actually holding his lighter in the air, my how I wanted to punch him!
LastAstronaut
I too was at the show at the Irish Centre...it was superb. Guess that makes me a "nerd"?
Sweeping statement I know
I wasn't saying that to enjoy it you had to be a nerd, the two mates I went with also found it superb and they aren't nerds either! I was just commenting on a fair bunch of the people standing near me.
As long aas you weren't the guy holding up his lighter! :o)
I can safely
say I wasn't that bloke. While their fan base might not be nerdish, it is certainly of an older persuasion.
This shouldn't detract from them, though.
Re: People Saying The Hold Steady Sound Like Oasis
You're just TRYING to be obnoxious cunts aren't you?
no actually
they sound like a very dull band to me.
it's music with some heart,
some obvious, self aware and tongue-in-cheek hearty goodness that makes good of nostalgia and the burnt hopes for a youth that's only getting wronger.
Man, what comes across most everytime I've listened to them is that he CARES; for assholes and angels alike, because they're alike.
And just because the songs are set in bars does not make them a bar band. And their music is entirely devoid of the spirit-in-the-sky redemptive qualities of Springsteen. And anyone who's seen them live can attest to Craig Finn being pretty much the antithesis of Liam. And their keyboard player is Groucho Marx. This is a good band.
Its not a bad album
but c'mon...it hasnt really got any massive standout songs on it and they have done much much better.
Perfect case of over-hype.
the first song I heard on their myspace
had a really simular guitar riff to an osais song, it was really simular it really is. And indeed some of it sounded like coldplay to me too with that smokey country bumkin rock n roll egde.
They are just dull.
Sequestered In Memphis
sounds like rock'n'roll star by osais...
DiS.....
...gave Boys and Girls in America a 6/10 last year (Charles Ubaghs review), and it was one of the best albums of the year. He got it horribly wrong with his horrendous review. Stay Postive is excellent, but a similar format to Boys and Girls. Boys and Girls was a 9/10. Stay positive is an 8/10. Perhaps they're overmarking this one to make up for the terrible Boys and Girls review.