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Craig Finn loves books and bars. It's not just that he pinched the title of he Hold Steady's third album from the ultimate manual for boozehounds, Jack Kerouac's "On the Road" ("Boys and Girls in America have such a sad time together"), but that every leery line of every song is crammed with the wayward poetry and passion of someone who is more familiar with the bottom of a whiskey glass than the sun. Thanks to his raucous Brooklyn band, his music--louder than its predecessors this time, with a few more ballads--also happens to make a great soundtrack for an all-night bender where broken-hearts and broken bottles become one. --Aidin Vaziri
Finally, The Hold Steady Stops Sucking! - Reviewed on 2008-09-28
Hearing The Hold Steady's debut album made me wonder: doesn't singer/songwriter Craig Finn have friends and family who care about him and don't want him to be humiliated? If so, couldn't they have stopped him from releasing this disaster? Their follow-up convinced me that he probably did, and that they insisted on at least hearing the next album before the public did.
These were not, however, the first albums that I heard by The Hold Steady. I was ignorant of the group until I started reading the rave reviews of their third album, Boys and Girls In America. Noting that their other albums were also critically adored, I went out and grabbed their latest release.
I was pretty much convinced right from the opening notes of "Stuck Between Stations" that the hype was justified. All of the Bruce Springsteen comparisons made perfect sense within about 5 seconds. But it was one of the lyrics that really made me a believer: "She was a really cool kisser and she wasn't all that strict of a Christian." (The reference to Jack Kerouac's On the Road was also pretty cool.)
The remaining songs on the record told me all that I needed to know about the boys and girls in Craig Finn's America: they live near the Twin Cities, hang out at malls, often end up along (or in) the Mississippi River, and love to drink up and smoke up. The effect is that it is impossible to listen to Boys and Girls In America without wanting to consume whatever substances - beer, cigarettes, weed - that happen to be within reach. But don't think for one second that this is a psychedelic record: it is rock `n roll, in all its pure but not so simple glory. Moreover, lest you think that he is glamorizing the use of drugs, note lyrics like "some nights the painkillers make the pain even worse" and "we started recreational, it ended kinda medical." Still, it's hard to not love a double-entendre like "It's hard to slow down when you're picking up speed."
At first, Finn's voice sounded way too much like The Boss to me. Still, I appreciated the unrefined quality that made him a believable teller of the events that he relates. Although he is often more of a shouter (those less so on this album, I would discover) than a singer, he tames his voice with wonderful results on "First Night", featuring the spectacular refrain of the album's title, and the drinker's anthem "Citrus", and acoustic lament that ends with "I've had kisses that make Judas seem sincere."
Not surprisingly, this is primarily a guitar-based record, recalling rockers like Thin Lizzy and punks like Stiff Little Fingers. The E Street Band is never too far beneath the surface, either, but this is more apparent in the increased use of pianos than the guitars. The varied musical template also includes a Hammond B-3 ("Chips Ahoy"), keyboards ("Some Kooks", "Massive Nights"), strings ("First Night"), and alternating male and female vocals (the semi-epic "Chillout Tent").
Boys and Girls In America achieves a small-town/suburban street drama romance that almost equals one of the first three records by the singer and band that is its biggest influence. It can rock with recklessness and pine with earnestness. Craig Finn's unpretentious but highly literate lyrics paint beautiful pictures of streets that are sparsely inhabited by desperate yet eager youngsters and of parties that are filled to the brim with them. This album measures up to any number of its 1970s kindred spirits, and may very well have rekindled that flame for the new millennium.
Now, sometimes it is pretty cool to discover a band in reverse. You know, you hear their third or fourth album first, and excitedly work your way backward. I have done this with several bands that have turned out to be among my favorites. In the case of The Hold Steady, however, I used to wonder if I would have been better off not looking back at all. Having heard Almost Killed Me and Separation Sunday (their first and second albums), some of the moments on Boys and Girls In America make me wince, as they recall some of the most annoying elements of those records, such as lyrics about getting high, geographical name-dropping, and saying that someone looks like someone else. But I can still listen to 99.9% of Boys and Girls the same way I did when I first heard it. Having dug into their previous releases, moreover, I am able to realize what a giant improvement it is, in addition to being a great effort on its own terms.
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