At this point, new Hold Steady albums can no longer be taken for granted. After a proud run of six albums in 10 years, the one-time Brooklyn workhorses have settled into a more leisurely, part-time rhythm. Age has cut down their time on the road; they now prefer weekend residencies to touring (“More of our time together is spent playing and performing music than setting up and taking down gear, driving it to the next place, setting it up again,” they wrote in a Bandcamp post, sounding like parents newly aware of how precious their time is.) And as either a symptom or a cause of the band’s reduced availability, frontman Craig Finn has been dedicating more time than ever to his solo career. His latest effort, I Need a New War, dropped just this spring.
So Thrashing Thru the Passion is the first Hold Steady album in more than five years, which would have been cause for more ceremony if the band hadn’t deflated expectations by releasing most of it in advance. Half the songs on the album were released as digital singles over the last few years; a couple of others were shared after the LP was announced. The result is a new Hold Steady album that, at least for the band’s most dedicated fans, won’t feel very new.
And yet, despite coming from a band that seems to be winding down in many ways, Thrashing Thru The Passion is so alive and elated that, if not for Hold Steady’s well-documented track record, it could be mistaken for the work of a band just hitting its peak. It’s as joyous and rousing as the band’s best efforts, but also looser and utterly unforced. Unceasingly uplifting, it makes almost no effort to shake up the group’s usual triumph rock, yet short of a completely unexpected reinvention or some left-field new muse, it’s a best-case scenario for what a seventh Hold Steady record could have sounded like.
Passion is the band’s first LP with keyboardist Franz Nicolay since 2008’s Stay Positive, which could account for some of the renewed pep. But a just as likely explanation is the band’s relative absence. The Hold Steady’s act demands too much commitment and perspiration for them to keep cranking out full-length shots of it every 18 months without diminishing returns. And especially after the time away, it’s a treat being submerged in Finn’s snapshots of rock’n’roll’s underachieving outsiders once again. “Denver Haircut” introduces a guy who, even at new restaurants, always orders the usual just to see what they’ll bring him. On “Star 18,” it’s a dude who claims he used to play with Peter Tosh, but never mentions it again once Finn says, “Man, I don't believe you.” That track also includes one of Finn’s great state-of-the-band nuggets: “Hold Steady at the Comfort Inn/Mick Jagger’s at The Mandarin.”
Rest assured there are gems among the few unreleased tracks, too. “Blackout Sam,” with its Memphis horns, is the band’s take on Pleased to Meet Me-era Replacements, or the song equivalent of Lou Reed reassuringly drawing out the word “alright.” Those same horns drive “Traditional Village” to Blues Brothers revue-levels of razzle while Finn spitballs low-brow music theory: “Down at the rock’n’roll station they’re exhuming the bones/Maybe death’s just when you hang up the telephone? And the reason these people still listen to Zeppelin is it sounds really cool when you’re stoned.”
As always, Finn’s vision of rock’n’roll is at once an utterly unglamorous and completely romantic. The Hold Steady treat rock the way Penn & Teller treat magic: They deconstruct it, demystify it and expose it warts and all, but do so out of love and a belief that its behind-the-scenes machinations are every bit as beautiful and intriguing as the polished final product. Fifteen years after their debut, the Hold Steady are still passionately making the case that, while there may not be much dignity in rock’n’roll, that doesn’t make it any less noble of a pursuit.
Buy: Rough Trade
