I know the local scenesters love love looooove The Hold Steady round these parts, but let me ask you a question. Do you have to be over 35 to love The Hold Steady? Also, do you have to be tone deaf and love speak-singing?
The Brooklyn-based rock band boasts four of five members calling the MSP-area home. One listen to the group’s new album, Stay Positive, and it’s easy to see why us Midwesterners get off on the hometown aesthetic of love, loss and E Street Band rockitude.
Stay Positive features 12 pop tracks that my mom could probably argue make use of excellent song structure, and she would probably note the poignant lyrics. But my mom is from Iowa. Maybe you have to be immersed in New York’s new wave revival or Oregon’s post-rock culture to “get” this band.
Maybe you have to know the band’s full back story, profess a love for Lifter Puller (and the good old days, naturally) to allow your ears to ignore that vocalist Craig Finn cannot sing. He sounds like my drunken uncle after a wedding. At least Bruce Springsteen could kind of sing.
Don’t get me wrong. The lyricism — on “Both Crosses” in particular — is admirable. The instrumentation — horns on “Sequestered in Memphis,” bow saw, banjo and mandolin on “Both Crosses” and harpsichord on “One for the Cutters” — is something modern pop bands would never even consider. The maturity throughout this album — restraint on guitar solo of “Joke About Jamaica” — is rich and acne free.
However, I’m not from Minnesota, I’m not 35, I like my vocalists to sing, and I’m afraid this album isn’t cutting the muster. So I’ll put this on a shelf and revisit it when my hearing aid battery dies.
