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Diminishing returns

The Hold Steady make it hard to Stay Positive
By RICHARD BECK  |  July 9, 2008

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WHERE’S THE IDIOSYNCRASY? Finn’s characters have always been sick, tired, and fried; on Stay Positive, for the first time, they’re boring.

There is a song on the Hold Steady’s debut album, Almost Killed Me (French Kiss, 2004), where the narrator fights a losing battle against his nicknames: “I been tryin’ to get people to call me Freddy Knuckles. But people keep calling me Right Said Fred.” He tries again and again: “Freddy Mercury?” Nope. “Drop Dead Fred?” It’s no use. A nickname is a little story about its owner, and Freddy is trying to fend off the stories that other people tell about him. For a while, Hold Steady lead singer Craig Finn wrote terrific stories. Matched to his band’s charismatic synthesis of classic ’70s rock and hardcore, these stories crackled, writhing, contentious little narratives ready to burst at the seams with energy and detail.

But on Stay Positive (Vagrant), Finn has decided he’d rather speak directly to all those grinning kids who’ve been crowding his shows for the past four years. Cut out the middleman narrator, I guess the theory goes. Get your message right to the people. Get this, straight from Finn himself, in a press release concerning the new album: “These are our lives. These are your lives. This is our fourth record.”

Confident in his band’s access to the universal truths of adolescence, Finn laces Stay Positive with lines like “Let this be my annual reminder/That we could all be something bigger.” Just don’t ask him what that “bigger” might be. The characters on the band’s first two albums are brought to life by the alchemical intersection of Finn’s declamatory voice and guitarist Tad Kubler’s agile, caroming slabs of distortion and feedback. It’s not just that their second CD, Separation Sunday (French Kiss, 2005), is a concept album that maintains a three-person cast — Holly, Charlemagne, and Gideon — over the course of its 11 tracks. By their words, actions, and quirky obscurities, these characters light the fires of their own individuality. Here is Gideon’s reading of Genesis: “Yeah, I guess I heard about original sin/I heard the dude blamed the chick/I heard the chick blamed the snake/And I heard they were naked when they got busted.” A character from Almost Killed Me introduces himself in “Hostile, Mass.”: “Hey, my name is Corey/And I’m really into hardcore/People call me Hard Corey!”

There’s nothing so idiosyncratic, nothing so funny on Stay Positive. The songs still teem with drug-addled romantics who would make it to church if only they weren’t so high, but they don’t do their thing in any way that might illuminate them. On “Yeah Sapphire,” Finn’s narrator announces, “I’m sick and I’m tired and I’m fried and you gotta believe me.” Finn’s characters have always been sick, tired, and fried; on Stay Positive, for the first time, they’re boring. They do what Finn wants them to. They never get up and walk around on their own.

This decreased narrative wattage bleeds into Finn’s singing as well. On those first two discs, his words spilled out in a thrilling, catastrophic rush. Now he favors a more straightforward voice, a sandpapery moan punctuated by perfunctory group sing-alongs. There are a few moments where he gets his blood up — “Navy Sheets,” for one — but there aren’t nearly enough.

Finn is obviously straining for bigger things, and if the kids at his shows yell these new songs back at him with passion and delight, which they probably will, I imagine he’ll be satisfied. He sounds as if he were satisfied. But his little stories, once stumbling so poignantly from church to bars to the ER, have bled into one another and disappeared.

THE HOLD STEADY + ABERDEEN CITY | Paradise, 967 Comm Ave, Boston | June 26 | 617.562.8800 | Free with RSVP atwww.going.com/HoldSteadyParadise

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Comments
Re: Diminishing returns
WEB SHERIFF Protecting Your Rights on the Internet Tel 44-(0)208-323 8013 Fax 44-(0)208 323 8080 websheriff@websheriff.com www.websheriff.com  Hi Richard,  On behalf of Rough Trade / Beggars Digital, Vagrant and The Hold Steady, many thanks for plugging "Stay Positive" (street date 14th July and advance, digital release date 9th June) ... .. thanks, also, on behalf of the label and the band for not posting any pirate links to unreleased (studio) material and, if your readers want good quality, non-pirated, preview tracks, Sequestered in Memphis” is available for fans and bloggers to stream / link to / post etc on the band’s MySpace  ... .. check-out //www.myspace.com/theholdsteady and //www.theholdsteady.com for details on “Stay Positive” and the band’s 2008 shows ... .. for a limited period a play-through of “Stay Positive” shall also be available on the band’s MySpace and on NME (//www.nme.com), although these are for promotional purposes only and the artist and labels have kindly asked fans and bloggers not to host or link to pirate copies of the full album on-line – for which many thanks in advance.     Thanks again for your plug. Regards,  WEB SHERIFF   
By WEB SHERIFF on 06/24/2008 at 3:06:28
Re: Diminishing returns
Dear Richard- First off, the Hold Steady have released 4 albums now, please make note of that. Second, the narrative leans in a different direction on this album and is not laden with bread crumbs where neophytes, like yourself, can easily follow. If you're looking for Holly and Gideon and Charlemagne, look elsewhere, this trip tackles different subject matter. Savvy? Apparently not. The lyrics alone in "Lord, I'm Discouraged", "Both Crosses" and "Slapped Actresses" outweigh any output by modern troubadours. Not only the lyrics, but the music is far superior to anything they have accomplished before. I suggest you start with yoga because you will be putting that foot directly in your mouth. Believe it, PG
By lungtrap on 06/27/2008 at 4:14:09

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