LINER NOTES: "Stay Positive"
Published 4:39 pm Friday, July 11, 2008
After digitally releasing “Stay Positive” weeks ago, the Hold Steady plans to put out a limited edition with three extra songs for its physical release Tuesday.
“Stay Positive” The Hold Steady
WHY CARE?: The Hold Steady is one of the most lauded rock bands working today.
TRIVIA: Craig Finn, the Brooklyn band’s lead singer, isn’t a Doors fan. He called Jim Morrison more of a drunk jerk — I’m cleaning up his language here — than a poet. Finn wrote in the Guardian that Morrison’s lyric, “There’s a killer on the road; his brain is squirming like a toad,” from “Riders on the Storm,” is the stone-cold worst line in rock.
HIGH POINTS: The Hold Steady delivers many. “Constructive Summer” starts things with a bang, followed quickly by “Sequestered in Memphis,” a song with the lines, “In bar light, she looked all right; in daylight, she looked desperate. That’s all right, I was desperate too.”
FANS ALSO LIKE: Quotable lyrics, Bruce Springsteen, beer.
ANDY SAYS: The Hold Steady gets a lot of press for being a drinking band, and, yes, it references booze like Us Weekly name checks Britney Spears. But between calls for a “double whiskey, coke, no ice,” Finn weaves in tales of lost weekends and murder trials. Mix his lines with classic rock chords, propulsive drums and the whine of an organ, and you end up with a better buzz than what a cocktail would provide.
GRADE: A minus
Andy Rathbun, Herald Columnist, arathbun@heraldnet.com, 425-339-3455
