We're Not Who You Think We Are
Album: Teeth Dreams
Year: 2014
Near the end of 1982, I got to see The Clash open for The Who. Which, at the time was my current favorite band opening for my all-time favorite band.
I was pretty sure even at the time that was never going to happen again. Until it did, when in 2014 Rox & I flew out to Minneapolis-St. Paul and saw The Hold Steady open for The Replacements.
[Read more…] about Certain Songs #608: The Hold Steady – “Spinners”
Album: Heaven is Whenever
Year: 2010
The difficult fifth album. It’s tripped up more than one great band. You start your career with four absolute winners in a row, but while it’s only cool and logical to wanna mix things up, you get too far away from your strengths for your own good.
It happened to the Ramones with End of the Century. It happened to X on Ain’t Love Grand. It happened to Pavement with Terror Twilight. And it happened to The Hold Steady with Heaven is Whenever.
[Read more…] about Certain Songs #607: The Hold Steady – “The Sweet Part of The City”
Album: Stay Positive
Year: 2009
I’ve seen The Hold Steady live five times in the past decade, which doesn’t seem like much, but considering that I don’t get out to see shows that much anymore, it’s a pretty fair amount.
And at least two of them were among the greatest shows I’ll ever see: opening for the Replacements in 2014, and of course, 2008’s rock ‘n’ roll lovefest with the Drive-by Truckers, which I wrote about totally hungover while sitting on the floor of the Virgin terminal at LAX waiting for an early flight to Seattle, where we were going to spend Thanksgiving.
[Read more…] about Certain Songs #606: The Hold Steady – “Magazines”
Album: Stay Positive
Year: 2008
One of the things about that differentiated Stay Positive from its predecessors was that there weren’t just quite a few songs that weren’t about fucked-up kids from a fucked-up scene.
Nope, there were also songs about fucked-up adults, too!
Like the protagonist in “Sequestered in Memphis,” who is clearly not having a good day, as he’s being interrogated by cops about something he barely remembers from a recent business trip.
[Read more…] about Certain Songs #605: The Hold Steady – “Sequestered in Memphis”
Album: Stay Positive
Year: 2008
Some of you might have noticed that one of the things I really like in an artist is prolificness.
And by the standards of the 21st century, putting out their three albums in three years, the Hold Steady were absolutely on fire. So to me, the two years between the world-beating Boys and Girls in America and the 2008 follow-up seemed almost interminable.
[Read more…] about Certain Songs #604: The Hold Steady – “Constructive Summer”
Album: Boys And Girls in America
Year: 2006
First it’s just Craig Finn:
“Southtown girls won’t blow you away
But you know that they’ll stay”
Dead air while the rest of the guys saunter up to their respective mics to join in with some raggedly imperfect harmonies.
“Southtown girls won’t blow you away
But you know that they’ll stay”
More dead air. Tumbleweeds. Days, weeks, months pass.
[Read more…] about Certain Songs #603: The Hold Steady – “Southtown Girls”
Album: Boys And Girls in America
Year: 2006
It seems to me that “Chillout Tent” is one of the more divisive songs in the Hold Steady canon.
After all, the story it tells is a combination of meet-cute and meet-gross, featuring a pair of singers — Dave Pirner and Elizabeth Elmore — voicing the thoughts of the characters in the songs, and the music is filled with dramatic piano flourishes and mariachi horns.
[Read more…] about Certain Songs #602: The Hold Steady – “Chillout Tent”
Album: Boys And Girls in America
Year: 2006
This is my favorite song on Boys And Girls in America.
“You Can Make Him Like You” is everything I could want in a rock ‘n’ roll song: catchy, smart and anthemic, and not for a second does it ever stop moving and changing, even as it builds to a fist-pumping, screaming-at-the-top-of-your-lungs climax.
[Read more…] about Certain Songs #601: The Hold Steady – “You Can Make Him Like You”
Album: Boys And Girls in America
Year: 2006
Boys and girls in America.
I’m sure I’m conflating a bunch of different memories into a single moment, but I still have a memory of the first night I felt part of the Fresno Tower scene. It was a warm summer evening in 1985, and it was at the Wild Blue.
Boys and girls in America.
I don’t recall who was playing: it coulda been Aqua Bob or The Wayne Foundation or Western Chapter or somebody else. It doesn’t really matter, because there was as much going on outside as there was inside.
[Read more…] about Certain Songs #600: The Hold Steady – “First Night”
Album: Boys and Girls in America
Year: 2006
“Chips Ahoy” was the first single from “Boys and Girls in America,” and like “The Swish” and “Banging Camp,” Craig Finn is trying to fit all of his words in and around Tad Kubler’s big-ass power chords.
The result is one of those Hold Steady songs that sounds like one of of the rockers from The River had that album been made by a Springsteen influenced not by 1960s frat-rock, but rather, The Clash.
[Read more…] about Certain Songs #599: The Hold Steady – “Chips Ahoy”