2006! Woo hoo!

“Sing” | The Dresden Dolls | Yes, Virginia | Roadrunner | 4/18/06 | 4:40 | buy disc/mp3s
I have to be in a particular mood to really get into the cabaret-rock created by Bostonians the Dresden Dolls. Nonetheless, their “let’s put on a show” spirit and pianist/singer Amanda Palmer’s messy candor, on record and over the Internets, charm me no end. They’re an endeavor I want to support, like, philosophically.

But there’s little qualification or doublethink when it comes to my affection for the closing tune on their record this year. Maybe I’m just a sucker for the power ballads. On my first few listens “Sing” was kind of a tearjerker.

I’ll take points off for the line about “the kid with the phone who refuses to sing,” because that just feels like an in-concert call-out, albeit deserved. Otherwise, there’s an incredible generosity of spirit to this song, in message and in execution. You can locate it somewhere between “sing for the president/sing for the terrorist/sing.”

When someone comes out against fear (I know, it doesn’t sound very bold there on the screen, but fuck it, in these times every little bit counts), when a performer invites, encourages, demands her audience to join in, to express themselves… well, I vote “yes.”

“Chips Ahoy!” | The Hold Steady | Boys and Girls in America | Vagrant | 10/3/06 | 3:09 | buy disc/mp3s
I’m a Hold Steady fan, so it was kind of a fig that a song off Boys and Girls would end up somewhere here. On “Chips Ahoy!” they bring the giant overdriven chords, the noodly organ and the hazed-out, gutter-born storytelling. They’ve even added in some gang backing vox to push the anthem button.

But the verse guitar is actually kinda the hook for me. Instead of their usual debauched classic rock pastiche thing, the heavy two-chord riffout recalls the Afghan Whigs, 90s alt-rockers close to mine own heart. It’s got the same bite and forboding that was their stock in trade.

The focus of yr random Hold Steady song will, on the surface, seem to be drink, drugs, good times gone bad, geographical references and self-consciously clever lyrical twists. In a way though, that stuff’s just set dressing.

The point of the chorus here, and really of the song en toto, is sketching out the distance between two people. “How ‘m I supposed to know that yr high if you won’t let me touch you?”–it’s more about the forbidden touch than the self-medication. You don’t need to have been dusted in the dark up in Penetration Park or whatever to relate.

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.]

Here are 13 of my 16 favorite songs from 2004. You’ll note the long dry spell before and after. This is officially incomplete and unpublished before the mid-06 PCR blog switchover.