hold steady

one of my favorite bands (and frankly just one of the best live shows i've seen (thanks lindsey)), the hold steady, lost their delightfully anachronistic keyboard player two days ago (to quitting, not to death). he added this color to the band that was much needed: the guitarist is a detached mystic white boy, the bass pl. is a bass pl., and the drummer purposefully gets his rock-kit groove on. but craig finn needed that yang, that dichotomy that made t.h.s. something to remark. what entity goes better with those barked lyrics 'we drink and we dry up and we get covered in rust/we get wet and we corrode and now we crumble into dust' than a preposterously mustachioed ham, pounding it out on the B-3 or the Korg.

anyhow, Paste did their top 8 t.h.s songs. a fine list, sure.

here's mine:

Lyric Honorable Mention: Citrus : "i've had kisses that made judas seem sincere"

Muisc Honrable Mention: Most People Are DJs

Honorable Mention: Chicago Seemed Tired Last Night - this song is over far too soon. if there's one gripe i have about t.h.s , it's the declarative unity of the pronoun 'we'. however this tune goes yard with that concept to describe debaucherous nights for us. the best song that conveys a unity of subject and author. you just want to say 'fuck yes'.

*bonus points for terrific rhyme (we mix our own mythologies. we push them out through pa systems. we dictate our doxologies and try to get sleeping kids to sit up and listen) 4*

8. Stay Positive - a sort of 'where-we've-been-how-we-got-here' tribute to their friends, vices, characters, and fans. they stumbled upon something many writers do and few bands can do well: bringing it back. t.h.s do that so well without sounding precious. it's almost jarring to hear them sing about anything else than Holly-leuja or Gideon or Ybor City.

bonus points for fist pumping shout chorus: 3

7. Knuckles - at his barkingly best, finn just succumbs to the fact that he'll never be anything but some self-effacing bastion of mediocrity. a lying liar. or is he commenting on someone else? an introduction to the tiered structure to t.h.s. songs. armed with a shield of characters and a weapon of wit.

*bonus points for the sunny d line (i've been trying to get people to call me sunny d/cause i got the good stuff that kids go for/ but people keep calling me five alive) : 4 *

6. Stevie Nix - by virtue of the last verse, this earns a spot. unique lyrical brush strokes unparalleled save maybe by bret easton ellis in 'less than zero' (he never rocked this hard, though.) catholic mythology + minnesota + /drugs *weak-willed teenagers looking for escape = the t.h.s. oeuvre

*bonus points for naming your song after stevie nix - 32*

5. Stuck Between Stations - i popped this album into my car after much hype by virtually every music mag, and it was one of those transported moments, both cinematic and out of body. too amazed to rock just yet. now, yes, subsequent listentings provided opportunity for plentiful air guitar, drums, and esp. piano, but what a great song.

*bonus points for creeping closer to the E-Street Band - 5*

4. Chips Ahoy! - a diddy about cookies? nope. the name of fortuitous pony that came in 6 lengths ahead and allowed the purchase of copious pharmies and weed only to further distance young men from young women? hell yeah. 1,000 chips delicious indeed.

*bonus points for shout chorus - 4*

3. Certain Songs - for all their high-falutin irony, gen-y ennui, and caustic myopia and 20/5 hindsight, t.h.s. have a soft spot for that old time of rock n roll. they love music, and here is their torch song for billy joel and meatloaf. certain songs get scratched into our souls (see blog posts sub.) and they ain't always the greatest, but when it hits, you feel no pain. or maybe a lot of pain. either way: truth.

*bonus points for hitting the nail on the head: 4*

2. Positive Jam - proof positive that finn is spinning a story. the foreward to a band actually committed to a song, complete with cliff notes on the 20th century, and a mantra that becomes turned on its head so quickly it barely is recalled fondly. but how often have we given ourselves a resolution only to have that resolution take on it's own perverse irony based on how much we fucked it over? they start off on a good note full of resolve. the fall is great. the further t.h.s. get into their career, the stronger this song is.

*bonus points for telling someone to do what your band name is: 6*

1. First Night - a masterpiece. a post-mortem for his characters, a lament on the fleeting nature of youth, and recalls everything for me from those nights with blurry vision at a party, or at a bar, or in a room with old friends, old girlfriends. steeped in nostalgia and ruminations of choices and mistakes and the haze of something that existed as undefinable in the past that now brings a crystal clear definition to the present. anchored by the words of kerouac 'boys and girls in america have such a sad time together', the music builds to a spine-tingling climax to finn repeating 'when we kiss we spit white noise'. finn is always looking back at the youth, an OTS glance as he's writing. he never seems to stare at the problem and analyze it. it's off-the-cuff reflections coupled with the introspection of crippled soul.

ok. its just one of the best fucking songs. period.

*bonus points for still giving me shivers: 7*