CD Reviews

The Hold Steady

Boys And Girls In America | Vagrant

By FRANKLIN SOULTS | November 13, 2006

3.0 Stars

Like many of America’s smartest rock bands — from Fountains of Wayne to the Drive-By Truckers — this Minneapolis-to-Brooklyn quintet are an anomaly. With their third album they’ve moved to youth-culture central at Vagrant and earned high praise from the hipster judges at Pitchfork. Yet as frontman Craig Finn tries singing instead of just reciting and the band hang tighter around their major-chord riffs, the music sounds older than ever, recalling beautiful-loser ’70s rock like Thin Lizzy’s “The Boys Are Back in Town” and Bruce Springsteen’s “Jungleland.” And Franz Nicolay at times tinkles the ivories with such abandon, he could be the E Street Band’s Roy Bittan tripping on mushrooms. Which he might well be except that, like Springsteen’s E Street, the Hold Steady are empathetic spokespeople for fucked-up youth, not fucked-up youth themselves, and their boss is like the Boss — a reprobate Catholic obsessed with redemption. Finn’s American boys and girls make pipes from Pringles cans, are great kissers but lousy lovers, yearn for “guys with the hot soft eyes,” and flip through radio stations as if they were searching for salvation. If they stumbled across the Hold Steady, they — unlike Bruce’s boys and girls — might even smirk and move on. But that’s one more reason a smart agnostic like you shouldn’t.

Related: Towns on the edge of darkness, Craig’s list, We're all the Hold Steady, More

Topics: CD Reviews , Entertainment, Music, Pop and Rock Music, More

| More

See more deals

view all

[ 05/29 ] PuppeTyranny present "Beans! Beans! Beans!" @ 95 Empire

[ 05/29 ] "2012 RISD Graduate Thesis Exhibition" @ Rhode Island Convention Center

[ 05/29 ] "TechnoCraft: Where High Tech Meets Handmade," @ Jamestown Arts Center

More Information

The Hold Steady, "Killer Parties Remix"

ARTICLES BY FRANKLIN SOULTS

HOW LOW CAN YOU GO? | February 10, 2009
"Turn down the bass!" a well-meaning fan finally yelled last Saturday night, about a half-hour into Murder by Death's sold-out performance downstairs at the Middle East.

LILY ALLEN | IT'S NOT ME, IT'S YOU | February 09, 2009
On her 2007 debut, this young British MySpace sensation came across like that rare thing — a natural.

¡VAMOS A ROCK! | January 28, 2010
'Rock en Español 2' rides a new East Coast wave of Latino music

PINK | FUNHOUSE | November 07, 2008
Everything about this good bad ol’ pop Cinderella’s fifth (!) album is tried, true, and tired.

CALL IT A COMEBACK | November 03, 2008
Alabama offspring Patterson Hood and Mike Cooley have been making raucous rock and roll together in one band or another for the past 23 years, about the same time it takes most offspring to grow up and get real jobs.