The Hold Steady “Southtown Girls”
Lifter Puller “4 Dix”

The new Hold Steady record has been a matter of contention in the indie kid blogiverse. There’s the “best eva” contigent. There’s the “disappointment of the year” crew. And then there’s a large posse of “wtf is up with this dude’s voice”/”wtf is up with this cock rock”/”these guys are old and their lyrics suX0r” people.

I’m a fan, and on first few listens Boys and Girls in America doesn’t hit me as hard as Separation Sunday, a concept record about the ravages of drugs and redemption in faith. Mostly because it doesn’t feel as narartive or cohesive, maybe partly because I’m a lapsed Catholic. But the new album seems at least the equal of their debut, Almost Killed Me.

The band tries a handful of new things, or at least things that singer Craig Finn hasn’t tried since the days of Lifter Puller, the previous group featuring him and guitarist Tad Kubler. Some of them work. The countryish harmony vox on “Southtown Girls,” for instance, really befits the hugeness of the song.

Other ideas fall flat. I mean, having Dave Pirner sing anything, even a little, on yr record is simply strange. (OK, there’s the Minnie connection, and at least a small chance that it’s some sort of tip-of-the-hat/flip-of-the-bird to Gerard Cosloy for semi-famoulsy describing the Hold Steady as “Soul Asylum fronted by Charles Nelson Reilly” or whateva.) (But still.)

Overall, though, I don’t think that much has changed. For better and worse.

Most of the indictments of B+GiA reiterate the complaints that stuck to Lifter Puller–mainly Finn’s nasal squawk of a voice and too-writerly, drugsploitation lyrics. I mean, here’s a guy who’ll write a song about the Horsemen of the Apocalypse attending a pill party. His delivery and concerns have been relatively constant in the past decade or so. It’s just Craig being Craig, to coin a phrase.

What did change between bands was the musical context. Lifter Puller’s instrumental axis churned out, at worst, generic, sorta sexless indie rock in the atmospheric/angular distorto mode. The Hold Steady traded that in for classic licks, heavy riffs and Southern rock wheedle, daring the ironic/sincere divide with music largely designed to approximate, yes, the thrust of a cock. So yr enjoyment will depend upon yr appetite (or stomach) for such an endeavor.

I like AC/DC. I love the Hold Steady, at least as much as I loved Lifter Puller. To me, sounding concretely like AC/DC feels like an upgrade from sounding vaguely like the Archers of Loaf.

Boys and Girls in America on Artist Direct.
[Soft Rock is apparently out of print and ridonkulously expensive, but I remember hearing something about a forthcoming reissue on Frenchkiss, so sit tight.]