I first heard of The Hold Steady sometime around 2005, right around when their sophomore album Separation Sunday came out, and that was the first album by the band that I ever bought. They've been one of my favorite bands pretty much since I first saw them live at Lolla in 2006.
If you've never heard of The Hold Steady or if you've heard of them but never listened to their music, I highly recommend you check them out. I suppose they would be described as indie rock, but I just consider them a rock and roll band. I've seen them described as the best bar band in the world, which might be accurate, as they put on a great live show, they always look like they're having a good time on stage, and, as they correctly stated in their 2008 song "Constructive Summer," "our songs are sing-along songs."
Lead singer Craig Finn and guitarist Tad Kubler handle most of the songwriting, crafting intricate, amazing, Springsteen-esque stories about drugs, booze, strange characters, religion, Midwestern teenage life, growing up, and being past your prime. Picking a Hold Steady song for this Rocktober was a tough task, and I almost did a Tuesday Top Ten on my favorite Hold Steady songs of the '00s, but I just didn't have time earlier this week, and I got another one in the hopper for this coming Tuesday.
I decided to go with something off of Separation Sunday, since that was my introduction to the band. For Christ's sake (pun intended), it's a concept album about the traveling partying exploits of a born-again hooker/addict named Hallelujah (her parents named her Holly), a pimp named Charlemagne, and a skinhead named Gideon. When I first got the album, I was immediately taken aback by Finn's half-talking, half-singing style, telling these strange, druggy stories about Catholicism. This was the first album where keyboardist Franz Nicolay was a full-time member of the band, and the piano and organ adds a fullness to the songs, really making the band sound like a demented, Midwestern modern version of the E Street Band.
The album is riddled with fantastic lines that have become so familiar to me that I sometimes forget there was a time I didn't know them. Here are a couple gems:
- From "Cattle and The Creeping Things:" "She said I was seeing double for three straight days after I got born again / It felt strange but it was nice and peaceful /And it really pleased me to be around so many people /Of course, half of them were visions / Half of them were friends from going through the program with me / Later on we did some sexy things / Took a couple photographs and carved them into wood reliefs."
- From "Your Little Hoodrat Friend": "Your little hoodrat friend's been calling me again / And I can't stand all the things that she sticks into her skin / Like sharpened ballpoint pens and steel guitar strings / She says it hurts, but it's worth it."
- -From "Banging Camp": "I saw him at the riverbank / He was breaking bread and giving thanks / With crosses made of pipes and planks / Leaned up against the nitrous tanks / And he said take a hit / Hold your breath and I'll dunk your head / Then when you wake up again / Yeah, you'll be high as hell and born again."
- From "Stevie Nix": "She got screwed up on religion / She got screwed by soccer players."
- From "Don't Let Me Explode": "Yeah, we didn't go to Dallas / Yeah, cause Jackie Onassis said that it ain't safe for Catholics yet / Think about what they pulled on Kennedy and then think about his security / Yeah, then think about what they might try to pull on you and me."
For today's election, I'm going with the last song on the album, "How a Resurrection Really Feels." It's about Holly "crashing into the Easter mass" and saying "Father, can I tell your congregation how a resurrection really feels." It's a fitting end to a great album, a cathartic song that ties it all together, with a great Slash-esque guitar solo from Kubler.
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