Artist: The Hold Steady
Album: Stay Positive
Label: Vagrant
Rating: 9.0/10.00
This is really a band that needs little introduction, or a background as to whom they are. The truth is, at this day and age there is only a small handful of artists making the type of impact that the Hold Steady have been making.
So, with the release of their fourth album (their second for Vagrant Records) one might assume the mighty rock tyrants might be running out of steam. Part of me wished they had been too, because with a band like the Hold Steady, it’s very hard not to get lost in the hype-machine that seems to follow them.
Stay Positive. Not much has changed, and this is a good thing. There is a recipe behind the Hold Steady thats part bare-bones barroom rock couple somehow with coupled with a textured complexity of sound that some how just works.
On the opening track, the Hold Steady pay homage to the late, great Joe Strummer (“Raise a toast to St. Joe Strummer/ He mighta been our only decent teacher”) and make a stance to build something this summer. Perhaps to help lay the brick to something bigger than they could ever imagine.
With their lead off single, “Sequestered in Memphis”, Ben Nichols from Lucero joins Finn. The way the two of them play off of each other and how their voices meld makes the song completely, and thoroughly enjoyable. It’s one of the best collaborations that could have ever been imagined, and adds so much depth to an already jam-packed album.
The title track, “Stay Positive” bares mentioning, as it’s one of the only places that the record stumbles. Something about the intro lags significantly. Hearing Craig Finn talk about the state of the scene seems really inappropriate for a Hold Steady album, and I’m not quite sure why. However, the chorus and the “whoas” salvage the track, and end it gracefully.
The story continues here, as has throughout their discography. Drunken nights, druggy parties, haggard women and the views of a person attempting to make peace with himself, and possibly a higher power. The resolution this time around is to keep on trying to move past the hardships of life, as opposed to living vicariously through other venues (at one point suggesting that “we can make our own movies”) and relying more on the strength of yourself.
Stay Positive stands its ground towards their prior efforts, nearly effortlessly. At times the guitar does the speaking where no words ever could (“Lord, I’m Discouraged” solo). It further solidifies the place the Hold Steady have carved out for themselves in the music world, as purveyors of straight forward rock with beat poetry spoken and slurred over it, making a summer classic, in only the way the Hold Steady can.