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Stay Positive

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The Hold Steady

 
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Stay Positive
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Avg: 4.0 (92 ratings)

The Hold Steady get darker, deeper, more complex.

  • We Say...

    Review by J. Edward Keyes

    Like the stories of Raymond Carver and the films of Kevin Smith, Hold Steady songs exist inside a specific, self-contained universe. There's a big Catholic church on the corner, a crumbling parking lot where hoodrats hang out and inject questionable substances; there's a water-damaged harbor bar where the jukebox always plays Meatloaf and a series of all-ages hardcore shows where restless teenagers show up to either experiment with toxins or to angrily refuse the same. The characters all know each other, too: Hallelujah and Charlemagne have stumbled in and out of enough Hold Steady songs to warrant above-the-title billing and even some of the second-tier characters are starting to look familiar. Close quarters like these tend to drive away casual listeners, but for die-hards it creates a kind of community — one long, never-ending narrative that just gets more complicated and circuitous with each new outing.

    On Stay Positive, the character arcs are still mostly the same — there are screwed-up Catholics trying to get their heads straight, on-and-off drug fiends ambivalent about their habits and lonely girls doing the wrong thing to get attention — the difference is that the sets have gotten more elaborate. No longer content to rely on shaved-down classic rock riffery (though there's still plenty of that), Craig Finn & Co. now drag out the harpsichord and the Theremin and the banjo, preferring texture over power. Finn has changed, too; he used to just bark, but now he sings — and sings well — yanking the songs across their peaks and valleys.

    2006's Boys & Girls in America attempted a similar sonic expansion but fell flat due to logey production that waxed the guitars to an unearthly gleam and made the background vocals sound like they were happening in a different song. Stay Positive is tighter and darker, less concerned with the payoff than the setup. People like to compare the Hold Steady to Springsteen, but the truth is that they're doing Springsteen's career in reverse, starting with Born in the U.S.A. and moving backwards to the complexity and relative subtlety of records like The River and Darkness at the Edge of Town. Stay Positive is best at its bleakest: "Joke About Jamaica" is a slow dive downward, a grim tale of a poor used girl poured out over sub-basement riffs and villainous piano; "Both Crosses" — the album's haunting centerpiece by a mile — is another of Finn's strange Catholic visions. Acoustic guitars cluster like gathering storm clouds as Finn croaks out stark prophecy: "She saw the footage right before it got cut/ And she saw the body and she saw the blood/ She saw the angel put the sword in his side/ And baby, that's how we got canonized."

    There are still plenty of carousers — "Sequestered in Memphis" is a straightforward shout-along, "Constructive Summer" is Hold Steady Anthem Rock 101 — but the best of these also branch out. "Yeah Sapphire" is a perfect example: patiently midtempo, it lazily repeats a single circular guitar pattern, blossoming slowly into a bright and gorgeous chorus. "I know the last time we touched I came on a bit rough, please forgive me," Finn pleads. This is the Hold Steady Universe circa 2008: a little more subtle, a little bit wider, a little more prone to gentleness. And, underneath it all, just as fucked-up as ever.

  • They Say...

    Review by Thom Jurek, All Music Guide

    If the Hold Steady quit after 2006's magnificent Boys and Girls in America, no one could have blamed them. After all, they had recorded three brilliant records. In 2004, THS issued the guttersnipe punk meets classic rock Almost Killed Me -- recorded mostly live since the band had little wherewithal in using a studio. They upped the ante with Separation Sunday, where songwriter Craig Finn's post-Catholic guilt and confusion led to lyric lines that were pregnant with self-mythologizing. The melodies were more intricate, the guitars referenced Led Zeppelin and Cheap Trick, and the stories about himself with busted heroines and drunken heroes -- all fallen former Catholic angels -- were as memorable as the Beat Generation icons rock & roll immortalized. Finally, 2007's Boys and Girls in America added new studio savvy -- along with the same crazy energy and chanted refrains that referenced more than just rock & roll clichés (they hinted at the confused self-mirroring universe Finn was trying to figure out) -- and an expanded band sound (with keyboards no less) drawing from Thin Lizzy's dual lead guitars, the Replacements, Led Zeppelin, and, of course, Bruce Springsteen of the '70s. Over three records, they'd done almost everything. To boot, they had a smoking live show that captured everything they did on record even better. Released in 2008, Stay Positive is the most sophisticated and erudite THS have ever sounded, and that's a mixed blessing. Where every song on previous sets felt unfinished and open-ended, these tracks are sheen-polished and almost slick. They reveal growth and studio expertise but also a kind of laziness. These 12 songs are full of near-cinematic rock dynamism and expertly rendered sonic effects. The Led Zep insider jokes are abundant in both lyrics and music, and the E Street Band's Darkness on the Edge of Town epic rock is channeled to alternately stunning and irritating degrees. The random reckless energy of the earlier album trilogy has been replaced -- mostly -- by tucked corners and smoothed edges. For instance, the harpsichord on "One for the Cutters" is dreadful; it dulls the impact of Finn's searing words that reference characters from his previous songs. One wonders if this is attempted irony, blunted personal pain, or both. Production aside, Finn's words and melodies have grown in depth without losing their immediacy. On album opener "Constructive Summer," the huge guitars of Stiff Little Fingers circa Nobody's Heroes meet the young wistful Van Morrison of "Brown Eyed Girl." But there's a twist: the protagonist is an American adult male trapped in adolescence, living in nowheresville; he seeks something worth remembering from all the blackouts and wasted life -- the romance of myth is displaced by false promises dictated by fear and self-deceit. He raises a toast to "...Saint Joe Strummer/I think he might have been the only decent teacher/Getting older makes it harder to remember/We are our only saviors/We're gonna build something this summer." The chorus offers a confusing, jokey chanted chorus (à la the Adolescents) that adds dimensionally to the loss here. "Navy Sheets" references four tracks on Led Zeppelin's Houses of the Holy: "Dy'er Maker," "The Ocean,""The Crunge," and the song itself from Physical Graffiti. But the piano in the wonderful "Sequestered in Memphis" -- channeling the E Street Band pianist Roy Bittan -- is very effective; it introduces the tune before a B-3 and a tenor saxophone move against the guitars to create an unholy union between story-song and mid-level punk anthem. But Finn and company save two of the best tunes for last in "Joke About Jamaica" and "Slapped Actress." Their drama, raw and incessant energy, and musical sophistication all come together in two songs that are less studied and calculated. There is an uneasy balance between "finished" big-time rock and the wily, playful freedom of "arena rock in my basement"; humor is maintained amid the darkness and Finn's self-referential mythology unwinds itself into even greater insight. Irony abounds, finally, in that even if it's the Hold Steady's least enjoyable recording, Stay Positive will break this band on the charts nationally.

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