Stay Positive (The Hold Steady)

I first caught The Hold Steady in concert on a PBS music show late one Saturday night... Awesome... Then my super cool Millennial-esque nephew told me how much he liked 'em and suggested I check out either Stay Positive or Boys and Girls in America... Couldn't remember which one he preferred, so I flipped a coin and went with the former... Definitely no regrets! Kinda reminiscent of Bob Mould and Husker Du... Kinda reminiscent of this great Montreal 80's band whose name eludes me right now, but whose members were all Med students at McGill University Medicine... Despite The Hold Steady evoking memories of my Alt Rock days of yore, they are a breath of fresh air in today's sea of digitally perfect and vocally enhanced music world... Chapeau!

If you are familiar with this band at all you have probably heard all of the comparisons from "The Replacements" to "Springsteen" and most of them are apt comparisons in their own little ways, but the sum of the parts is much better than the individial pieces here. Musically they have never been in finer form. This is an album that you just want to crank the volume on your stereo or while in your car...yet you can also dial it down and listen to Craig Finn's lyrics which like Springsteens are often about those who fall between the cracks, where Springsteen's visions may be more poetic...Finn's are more harsh and demanding. Top all of that with his unique voice and delivery which demands the casual listener to give them a repeated listen when they forst come across the band and when you put it together you have one of the finest albums of 2008.

**2 1/2 stars** Why is there hype for this album and why do people have this in their top ten lists? I can think of at least 30 albums this year that blow this trite & repetitive garbage away. Maybe I'm missing something. A band that sounds like something that would happen if you mixed a trailer trash Bruce Springsteen with a "We forgot how to play catchy hooks" Bad Religion. The impromptu over the top guitar solo in `Lord, I'm Discouraged' is so ridiculous it just adds as a precursor to the rest of the album. Filled with ridiculous lyrics and boring music that never goes anywhere this album is a real downer trying to disguise itself as a rocker. I strongly suggest you don't make the mistake I did and buy this album on word alone. Listen to the samples and make your own judgment and don't believe the hype!!

After the major leap forward that Boys and Girls in America was, The Hold Steady stood a pretty good chance of having me completely forgive them for their first two albums. Perhaps singer/songwriter Craig Finn's Catholic Church would have required him to confess the musical sins of his past, but I would simply ask that he make another record comparable in quality to their third one. Unfortunately, their fourth album - Stay Positive - doesn't quite scale such grand heights. On Boys and Girls in America, Finn's lyric writing had grown by leaps and bounds. On Stay Positive, it is still pretty good. The religious dimension continues to give his songs a fair amount of depth. Among the more memorable lyrics are "Me and my friends are like/The drums on `Lust for Life'," "In bar light, she looked alright/In daylight, she looked desperate," and "Sniffing on crystal in cute little cars/Getting nailed against Dumpsters behind townie bars." That last lyric comes from "One For the Cutters," the ... Read more

When I first heard the The Hold Steady, I didn't get them. I could not get past Craig Finn's vocals and the simple regurgitation of rock and roll cliches. So I figured they were trying to trick me. Why would a band in the new century just play straight ahead rock music? I had to be missing something and that annoyed me. Included in this recording you should know: There isn't any tricky production. There isn't soci-political statements being tossed up as enlightened dogma. After the second listening it all came back to me. I remembered the joy of putting on a Stones album. I remembered digging a Springsteen record. I remembered about singing along in the car to Tom Petty, Creedence, The Pretenders, The Clash etc. Sometimes it's just rock and it's important because it's simple. Sometimes it doesn't have to change the world to change your outlook. If you like Rock when the count to get it started is "One, Two, Three, Four", if you are not looking for vocal hysterics,... Read more