Album Review

Anyone who wants to complain about the present state of rock and roll just hasn’t been listening to The Hold Steady. The Minnesota-based quintet just keeps piling triumph on top of triumph, and they’ve hit yet another stunning peak with “Stay Positive,” easily the most exhilarating album to come down the pike this year.

“Constructive Summer” sets the tone with a blazing blast of electric guitars, shout-along backing vocals, and lead singer Craig Finn preaching the rock and roll gospel, with shout-outs to Iggy Pop and “Saint” Joe Strummer. If there is indeed a theme to which Finn and co. keep returning, it’s the complicated relationship between artist and audience. Rock bands play a big role in several songs throughout.

Speaking of rock, The Hold Steady aren’t afraid to delve into musical areas that would seem like clichés in lesser hands. Tad Kubler busts out lighter-worthy guitar solos on “Lord, I’m Discouraged” and “Joke About Jamaica,” and the synths on “Navy Sheets” recall, believe-it-or-not, Rush. There’s a “Rosalita”-like drums and vocals breakdown on “Sequestered In Memphis.” Heck, “Joke About Jamaica” even features a talk box. The reason all this stuff works is because there’s not an ounce of irony to be found. The Hold Steady display their rock and roll heart so even the kids in the back row can see and hear it.

On “Stay Positive,” THS aren’t afraid to strike out in new musical territories far from their bar-band comfort zone. “Both Crosses” is a moody and mystical folk number that never gets much louder than a low grumble. Most striking of all is “One For The Cutters,” in which Finn sets his tale of a college co-ed getting involved with a bad crowd against a harpsichord-fueled melody. The antiquated instrument makes it seem like even in the Elizabethan era, privileged girls were drawn to the wrong side of the tracks. Finn makes it clear who gets justice in this situation, asking, “When one townie falls in the forest, can anyone hear it?”

Finn’s attention to detail in the lyrics is marvelous throughout. You can see the “one drop of blood on immaculate Keds” in “One For The Cutters;” you can practically smell the grotty bathroom featured in the one-night-stand-gone-awry story, “Sequestered In Memphis;” and you all know the condescending music snobs found in “Joke About Jamaica.” The knee-jerk comparisons to early Springsteen emanate from the sound of the band and Finn’s singing style, but such comparisons are apt, because who else but the Boss so vividly captured small-town streetlife in all its dead-end grandeur?

By the time The Hold Steady issue their closing salvo “Slapped Actress,” with Finn singing “Man, we make our own movies,” not as a matter of fact, but as a wake-up call to the faithful, you’ll likely be singing right along with the cathartic “Whoa-oh!” chorus. If they keep this up, future generations of rock stars will be invoking The Hold Steady in their own odes to the healing, unifying power of rock and roll.

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