Music Review: The Hold Steady - Stay Positive

It’s understandable why The Hold Steady wanted to release Stay Positive digitally well over a month before its official release date. The album is so overstuffed with summer jams, ballads of rejection, and meditations on Americana, that it has already succeeded in becoming the definitive summer album of 2008 well before it was even released this week. Stay Positive is also one of those albums with enough diversity in song styles and pure rock transcendence to have us keep coming back to it for as long as we love rock.

Forget the Springsteen comparisons. I’ve always advocated that The Hold Steady’s major influences were the godfathers of alternative rock, in Craig Finn’s native Twin Cities, The Replacements, and especially the oft-forgotten Hüsker Dü. Finn even looks like Huskers guitarist Bob Mould. The influence has never been more apparent than on “Constructive Summer,” a 21st-century response to “Celebrated Summer,” arguably Hüsker Dü’s most famous song.

True, Stay Positive never reaches the titanic heights of Boys and Girls of America, just like New Day Rising didn’t reach the heights of Zen Arcade. But like New Day Rising, Stay Positive takes the populist charm and natural songwriting hinted at by the band’s previous album and streamlines it into one, glorious package. It’s the Hold Steady’s most accessible album yet, one that takes the band out of its bar band roots and puts the band at the forefront of all discussions of rock this decade.

With so many current indie bands trying in vain to break new ground, one of Stay Positive’s greatest charms is the dues it pays to the past. There are nods to Led Zeppelin, Iggy Pop, Joe Strummer directly in the lyrics, as well as in the music. Traces of CCR, the Band, Cream, and even Bob Dylan can be found all over the place. “Constructive Summer” is followed by a tragic tale of romantic desperation in “Sequestered In Memphis,” which leaves the tragedy to subtext.

Article Author: Ethan Stanislawski

Ethan Stanislawski is a freelance journalist/critic and new media specialist. He is a regular reviewer and staff writer at Prefix Magazine, and also contributes regularly to Blogcritics Magazine. His interests include theater, film, and pop music …

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