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.
And then, with a swoosh of Franz Nicolay’s organ, the entire band kicks in, and it’s utterly glorious.
Southtown girls won’t blow you away
But you know that they’ll staySouthtown girls won’t blow you away
But you know that they’ll stay
And then, just like that, Kubler, aided by the huge spaces in Bobby Drake’s drumbeats, peels off yet another big-ass Zep riff that kicks “Southtown Girls” into a new lane.
Meanwhile, Finn gives us some unreliable narration on just how to find the titular girls:
Take Lyndale to the horizon
Take Nicollet out to the ocean
Take Penn Ave out to the 494
Near the end, after a nice twin-guitar solo by Kubler and a rarer-than-rare harmonica solo by Nicolay, the back half of the last verse gets almost funky, as Gavin Polivka leans into his basslines over Drake’s stuttering beat while Finn leaves a couple of text messages.
Meet me right in front of the rainbow foods.
I got a brown paper bag and black buckle shoes.
If anything seems weird then just cruise.Meet me right in front of the party city.
That two sided tape it gets way too sticky.
I got a bad case of noisemaker blues.
But with “Southtown Girls,” it’s all about that chorus, which rings out over and over again, always keyed to that organ swoosh and those joyful harmonies.
Southtown girls won’t blow you away
But you know that they’ll stay
Southtown girls won’t blow you away
But you know that they’ll stay
Easily the least epic of all of the Hold Steady’s album closers, “Southtown Girls” is nevertheless a fitting closer for Boys and Girls in America, positing that after all of the craziness that goes on between those American boys and girls, sometimes a little stability is just what the doctor ordered.
And for the second straight year, The Hold Steady had made my favorite album of the year.
The last time that had happened was was 1979-1980 with St. Joe Strummer and The Clash, back when I was just beginning to live some of these stories.
Fan-made video for “Southtown Girls”
“Southtown Girls” performed live at Glastonbury, 2007