Separation Sunday

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Total Tracks: 11   Total Length: 42:04

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Michael Azerrad

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eMusic editor-in-chief Michael Azerrad is the author of Come As You Are: The Story of Nirvana (Doubleday, 1993), which remains the definitive Nirvana biography,...more »

06.07.08
Born to Run minus the romance, plus Catholic guilt.
2005 | Label: Frenchkiss Records / The Orchard

A lot of hip bands spend their time either trying to transcend their embarrassing formative years — or pretending they never happened at all. So it's refreshing that a mega-hip band like the Hold Steady so avidly explore the lie-dream of the suburban soul.

Minnesotan talk-singer Craig Finn spits aphoristic poetry about wasted youth, all rehab and tawdry scenarios, in a caustic, blizzard-cutting upper Midwestern bark, his W.C. Fields often erupting into Ralph Kramden. His oracular testifying fronts beerily anthemic chord progressions, shameless twin guitar lines and fist-pumping, meat-and-potatoes riffs served up on an aluminum platter by lead guitarist Tad Kubler; theatrical dynamic shifts and the grandiose whirr of the keyboards recall Bruce Springsteen in extremis.

Speaking of the Boss, songs like "Hornets! Hornets!" profile the same kind of suburban losers in albums like Born to Run, but while the Boss romanticized his characters as beautiful losers like something out of an early Scorsese flick, the people in Hold Steady songs aren't beautiful, and they're far more familiar than anything you'll ever see in a Hollywood movie. So while Springsteen rhapsodizes about a "barefoot girl sittin' on the hood of a Dodge," Finn refers to exactly the same type of person as… read more »

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Good song writing, same sound

Wombat2000

The Hold Steady has a very specific sound which, I've now learned, doesn't change much album to album. I enjoyed this one quite a bit, but it sounds an awful lot like the other Hold Steady album I have: Heaven is Whenever. It will probably be a while before I need more than these two. That said, the songs on the album are all pretty solid. I particularly like \"Cattle and Creeping Things\" and \"Your Little Hoodrat Friend.\" \"Hornets! Hornets!\" is a great start to an album, and \"Don't Let Me Explode\" are pretty good too. I'm a little befuddled about why the word hoodrat, which is a slang term for a promiscuous girl who hangs around her neighborhood, makes appearances in so many songs on this album (I'm inclined to say it's in all of them, but I can't confirm that). I wonder if there's a story there.

user avatar

The one to get

JNathan

The Hold Steady made its bones with this one. Listen to the sample of "Your Little Hoodrat Friend"– if this is your cup of tea, you will love this album.

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Perhaps Its a Generational Thing?

mrbinky3000

I tried. I really tried. However, I don't like it. Not one bit. Listening to the songs actually made me car sick. It's nothing but a steady stream of talk singing, stale guitar-riffs, stale organ riffs, stale drum beats... but its "retro" so I guess that makes it cool? I could see the 40+ regulars at dive bar liking this because it reminds them of the potential they had during their youth before they crawled in the bottle. It was the early 80's, the economy was good, their livers still worked. They just got their first credit card. However, everyone else would seek consolation someplace else. Sorry fellas.

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American Shit

Sucklechimp

It's not surprising non-Americans find this music to be dull. This is strictly American shit. You can't understand it if you haven't lived it, it's that simple.

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It hurts bad

bikothehamster

I hate this album. I tried to like it, I tried, I tried, I tried. Maybe it's me, not the music. But I can't even get through it. And I don't know how so many people could like it, except that most people have bad taste. Every song is the same. If you like phony storyteller rock with some guy talk singing about she high me high we high the whole ridiculous way, you might like this. I wish them and everyone that likes them the best, but I wish I could take back my credits. Ugh

user avatar

Fine songs. Dull album.

sjsearle

There's nothing wrong with the individual tracks. They work well as part of a large music library on permanent shuffle; an occasional Hold Steady song pops up and fits in well. But the 11 tracks just don't cut it as an album. The whole thing gets a bit dull after the first few tracks. Too samey. Too many references to "hoodrats". Blah, blah, blah. Next.

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Fucking Right!

EarnedSecurity

So glad to see emusic rank this at #2 for the decade, which is about where it is on my permanent rotation. More than just a great musical album, it's like a literary work, a world unto itself.

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I still don't get it

321Brooks

I tried this when it first came out and didn't like it. Saw it on emusic's best albums of the decade list and thought I'd give it another shot. I still don't get it. It just isn't very interesting or original. Pass.

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Dazzling car wreck

aajej

Like a wild, weird blend of Springsteen, Guns & Roses, and Randy Newman, this has some of the most phenomenal rock songs of this decade. Shocking in a number of different senses.

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Rock and Roll Mythmaking

theamazingrando

If, like me, you first got into this band through Boys & Girls, this record can be a little difficult to crack. It's lyrically and musically dense and lacks the immediate hooks of their more recent albums. What you get in return is an astonishingly original voice and some of the most compelling storytelling put to tape (not to mention some killer fist-pumping guitar moments). I say it's worth the trade-off. Definitely my favorite Hold Steady LP.

Recommended Albums

They Say All Media Guide

The Hold Steady’s Almost Killed Me is their hands-down masterpiece. A swirling maelstrom of intense, hilarious, and breathtaking rock & roll, it should have been the album that knocked everything else into a cocked hat in 2004. Of course, it was mostly ignored outside the homes of a handful of indie snobs and adventurous punks, but it’s there, it’s amazing, and most likely the band will never be able to top it. Separation Sunday comes pretty damn close, though. It is a much darker record, revolving around drug casualties, broken lives, a hoodrat fixation, spiritual and physical dissipation, and general despair, and there aren’t as many easy laughs this time out — but instead the listener gets lots of head-shaking wonderment at Craig Finn’s genius lyrics and voice. His gruff, in-your-ear vocals negotiate the twisting torrent of words like a world-class skater kid. He is insanely literate and insanely insistent: he’s like the guy who calls at 2:30 a.m. in a frenzy to holler about his latest disaster of the heart, the bar-stool poet with a religious obsession, or the guy who corners you at a party and just won’t shut up about how Boston are the missing link between the Beatles and Derrick May — only you don’t mind because he is strangely brilliant. He is also just about the best rock & roll frontman since Bob Pollard. In fact, the group sounds a bit like Guided By Voices at times, only a Guided By Voices that want to kick your sorry can up and down the length of the bar. Or maybe a GBV that worship Springsteen instead of the Who. Whipping up a classic rock-inspired frenzy of monitor-straddling guitar riffs, dual harmony leads, E Street piano flourishes, and galloping horns, the band behind Finn sounds like nothing less than Jim Steinman’s dream group. You could talk about great individual songs (the epic “How a Resurrection Really Feels,” the piledriving album opener “Hornets! Hornets!,” the weird and almost funky “Charlemagne in Sweatpants”), but the strength of the album is in the flow from song to song and the way the intensity level (which starts off at a near fever pitch) elevates until your head is just about ready to burst from the thrill of it all. Call it a quaint idea in 2005, but Separation Sunday is truly an album, one that sounds almost perfect when played from beginning to end in the proper running order. Block out about 42 minutes sometime, hold steady, and get ready for indie rock — no, rock & roll — at its sweatiest, most intense, and most impressive. Long live the album; long live the Hold Steady. – Tim Sendra

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