We're Not Who You Think We Are
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”
Album: Boys and Girls in America
Year: 2006
Welcome to my favorite album of this century.
Actually, (and yes, I’m “actually”ing myself), welcome to my favorite album since Nevermind & Achtung Baby!, which makes Boys and Girls in America my favorite album of the past quarter-century.
And if I could somehow prorate the age I was when this album came out against the age I was when I first discovered all of the albums I would otherwise put into my all-time top 20, it would definitely be in the conversation.
[Read more…] about Certain Songs #598: The Hold Steady – “Stuck Between Stations”