Long winded ‘Hello, look at me, I’m going to end world hunger through the medium of mild indignation’ introductory posts fall somewhere between boring and ‘kill me, kill me now’, depending on a number of factors I have yet to identify, and as much as I enjoy inflicting pain on... well basically everyone, I’ll skip straight to talking bollocks about nothing in particular.
‘The Hold Steady’ are slowly destroying my ability to listen to anything other than ‘The Hold Steady’. This would be a lot more annoying if they weren’t so utterly fantastic, but there are whole months of listening-based pleasure in either of their first two albums so I could really be a lot more upset than I am. Some of the densest, funniest and most affecting lyrics you'll hear this side of anyone other than 'The Mountain Goats' over a band dripping charm and energy channeling 'The Replacements' and 'The E Street Band', it's a bit like a perpetual grin in a bottle really.
Their third and fourth albums could kick the stuffing out most other bands best material too, but they don’t have the thematic cohesion and narrative structure of ‘Almost Killed Me’ or ‘Separation Sunday’, and while the songs seem more fully formed and have interesting new developments like better production values and actual choruses on the majority of songs, they just seem to be missing whatever it is that makes me listen to ‘Knuckles’ on loop for hours at a time. It probably also has to do with Craig Finn, their shouty, sing-speaker of a frontman, toning down the obscure allusions somewhat and sounding less like he’s about to keel over from alcoholic poisoning. Whatever it is, I very much doubt I’ll stop listening to the early records, or Finn and Kubler’s work in 'Lifter Puller', any time soon. In fact, I can literally only think of one bad thing to say about anything they’ve done, a simple ‘nice idea but er.... no’ to the harpsichord on ‘One for the Cutters’.
Listening to ‘Pavement’s’ ‘Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain’ at the moment though. Still not quite sure I get it just yet, almost there though. May talk about it more when I do. Cracking guitar work.
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