The Hold Steady’s previous album, Boys and Girls in America, was an exhilarating, emotional, and occasionally sobering mix of songs about drinking, drugs, and other wholesome activities. Its characters seemed to enjoy getting their kicks and fixes in the moment, but remained acutely aware that the morning after wouldn’t be so sweet. Its most obvious influences were impeccable – a holy triumvirate of the Replacements, Husker Du, and E-Street Band-era Bruce Springsteen came to mind for various reviewers – yet the album somehow managed to incorporate those influences without sounding like a cheap knockoff.
The band’s latest album, Stay Positive, wears these influences with pride once again, perhaps a little too much so for some fans and critics. Still, it’s not accurate to dismiss the band’s latest effort as unoriginal or blandly derivative. Despite what one witty critic recently wrote, lead singer Craig Finn isn’t the offspring of Springsteen and Bob Mould. The band brings an organic, traditional rock sound, free of needless background music and manufactured noise, and an intensity to both their albums and live performances that do separate them from the glut of indie bands.
Stay Positive is a good album, even if it doesn’t quite match up to either Boys and Girls or their earlier album Separation Sunday. The songs vary from aggressive, pseudo-macho anthems (macho for indie standards, at least) like “Constructive Summer” and “Sequestered in Memphis,” to ballads like “Lord, I’m Discouraged.”
Although the vocals are a bit more restrained and the instrumentation a tad more polished, Finn still talk-sings in his distinctive voice and the band still makes a decent amount of racket. In an album setting, the band clearly knows how they want their music to sound; it’s textured and layered without being oversaturated or suffering from a cold production.
The songs explore many of the same themes as Boys and Girls and Separation Sunday. Like those two albums, Finn’s characters still invariably always seem to be getting older at breakneck speed, aided by drugs, booze, horizontal tangos, or the various other temptations of the late-night scene. These are songs where the characters could either be heading for redemption or disaster, or maybe both. There’s a fair amount of boredom and restlessness here, with little hint of resolution or positive endings.
Article comments