Obscure Gems: The Hold Steady - Stay Positive

The Hold Steady kick off their motivational-speaker-esque titled album with a driving overdriven guitar in Constructive Summer.

The opening track starts with vocals/guitarist Craig Finn singing,

This whole town is lifeless

been that way all our whole lives just

work at the mill until you die

work at the mill and then you die

A Stinkin’ Lincoln product like myself can relate to that, but he keeps an optimistic outlook on the situation.

We're gonna build something this summer 

we'll put it back together

raise up a giant ladder

with love and trust and friends and hammers

The Hold Steady is a recent discovery for me, and they are the band I never knew I wanted.  They are the ultimate bar band.  The rock that you are screaming over in the best night out on the town of your life.  Stay Positive is the soundtrack of that great night out, and it’s got everything that such a night would demand.  After the rocking opening they go sing-songy with a track that may be the greatest drunk anthem ever written (or at least since “I Got Friends in Low Places”...don't ask).  

In Sequestered in Memphis Finn sees a drunken meet-up with the girl of the night as a business interview.  He sings,

In bar light she looked alright. 

In daylight she looked desperate.

That's alright, I was desperate too.

I'm getting pretty sick of this interview.

The song is almost too much fun.

Their sound just wreaks of barstools and solo cups, you’ll almost swear you can smell stale beer through the speakers.  They sound sort of like a small town E-street band backing the lead-singer of Counting Crowes... if the Counting Crowes lead singer had a blood-alcohol content of .56, and segued back and forth from raspy-bellows and almost spoken-word verses.  This is all much better than it sounds.

They manage to mostly adhere to the album title, with positive jams that, gasp, actually rock pretty hard.

Even when the band goes slow-jam in Lord I’m Discouraged you get the sense of a guy propped on the edge of a bar pouring his heart out, more so than a dude ready to open some veins in a warm bath.

In Lord I’m Discouraged Finn takes a tale that could be mopey and corny: a song from a lovelorn who semi-stalks a lost love as she goes man-to-man and is abused by her new suitors.

The song is mostly a prayer and he sings,

She says that she's sick

But she won't get specific

The sutures and bruises are none of my business

As the song closes, he seems resigned to his fate,

Excuses and half-truths and fortified wine

I know it's unlikely she'll ever be mine

So I mostly just pray she don't die

Perhaps the most challenging aspect of the Hold Steady is the raspy voice of its lead, but I think that Finn’s rasp adds more than it hinders.  He sounds like he frequents the parties that he sings about.  I’ll pass on the drinks, but I’d like to go for the music.

-Anthony