Yahoo! Music Album Review

Released on 15/01/07
Label: Vagrant

Got talking to this guy in the corner bar the other night, said he wanted to tell me all about the boys and girls in America. He looked pretty wrecked, eyes like Bloody Marys, skin like strip lighting, like he hadn't seen daylight since 1987. I asked him if he'd been drinking and he said "All my life", so I set him up some whiskey and set him up some ginger, and got myself some ice cubes and settled down to listen. "Cancel your plans", he said, "tell the girls you've gone away, this is going to take all night. This is going to take all night."

So yes. If you haven't heard the excited chatter about Brooklyn five-piece The Hold Steady, best fix yourself a stiff drink and stick on some Bruce Springsteen, we may be awhile. Formed in 2000 by Minneapolis émigré Craig Finn, the group have spent most of the decade weathering countless musical fads in NYC, sticking faithfully to the bar room Americana championed by The Replacements and the man they call The Boss.

You'll recognise the territory in an instant. Peopled by street corner prophets (their second record, "Separation Sunday", was a concept album about the battle between Catholicism and rock'n'roll), and big-hearted losers, this is a well-thumbed romantic underworld, a one-stop destination for anyone who's ever dreamed of being drunk in America. Finn, with a voice like crushed glass in a neat tequila, pitches himself knee-deep in the middle of it all, the unsteady narrator struggling to be a saint in the city. Judging by the liquor and narcotics that wash regularly through his songs like bad luck, he's been losing that fight for quite some time now.

They could have blown up big anytime, or been ignored for decades, growing steadily more bitter along with a thousand other alcoholic visionaries. Luckily for the band, their move to punk indie Vagrant (home to emo godhead Dashboard Confessional), coincided with a genre-defining burst of creativity. Not since Springsteen's "Greetings From Ashbury Park, NJ" has an album carved poetry so successfully from the dirty streets of America's greatest cities, or has a lyricist dealt so skilfully with the themes of addiction, failure and snatching redemption a split second before passing out.

You could pick a line almost a random from every song and it would tell the same story. "It started recreational / It ended kinda medical", from the Thin Lizzy swagger of "Hot Soft Light". "I love this girl / But I can't tell when she's having a good time", in "Chips Ahoy". "They say you don't have a problem until you start to do it alone", from "You Can Make Him Like You". "We had some massive nights / Every song was right", from the celebratory "Massive Nights". If reading this makes you want to head for rehab, move along please.

But if you've got a sudden dry feeling in your mouth, take the weight off, friend. I want to tell you all about the boys and girls in America.

    by Ian Watson