When Pitchfork finally received a full-art copy of Boys and Girls in America, it came with a Hold Steady coaster, a wink at the received logic that Craig Finn and his cohorts are members of "America's #1 bar band." That's an ill-fitting tag for a couple of reasons; first, because the vast majority of the bars in the U.S. feature DJs and jukeboxes not bands-- let alone ones as unique and powerful as the Hold Steady.
Second, and more importantly: Although the characters in the Hold Steady's beery tales are big drinkers, you can't imagine many of them bellied up to a bar. That sort of drinking-- introspective, sometimes done alone, indoors-- is the antithesis of the imbibing in Hold Steady songs. These characters are drinking at apartment parties, at festivals, in fields, in cars. In "Stuck Between Stations", the protagonist and his friends "drink from [a] purse"; "Massive Night" has the boys "feeling good about their liquor run"; and in "Party Pit" the female character is "gonna walk around and drink some more." They're not reflective or nostalgic, and when frequent Finn heroine Holly is contemplating the past, it's with regret she can no longer get as high as she used to.
So it's no wonder that critical darlings the Hold Steady aren't exactly indie rock heroes. Marginalized to that world almost by default-- radio and video are, for the most part, unkind to new rock bands not targeted at high-schoolers-- the Hold Steady craft classic rock-indebted music that would sound better sandwiched between Born to Run and Back in Black than Illinois and Tigermilk. In other words, the more likely you are to use music as a social lubricant than as a social balm, the more likely you are to enjoy the Hold Steady.
And if you dislike this band, you wouldn't be alone. After years of making detail-heavy music with both Lifter Puller and now the Hold Steady, Craig Finn enjoyed a critical breakthrough last year with the divisive Separation Sunday-- a loosely conceptual album based around a trio of characters named Charlemagne, Gideon, and Holly-- which wowed critics with its back-alley poetry and willingness to reach the cheap seats, but left many listeners cold over Finn's gruff sing-speak vocals and his band's tendency towards licks rather than grooves.
On Boys and Girls, some things have changed that will make the band more palatable to doubters yet could disappoint Separation Sunday fans: Finn sings more than speaks, and his lyrics have a big-picture approach, allowing listeners to fill details of their own lives into the songs rather than be required to commit fully to those of his characters. Putting less emphasis on lyrical detail than in the past, Finn claims in opener "Stuck Between Stations", a paean to poet and suicide-victim John Berryman, that "words won't save your life"; later, on "First Night", he writes that "words alone can never save us." It's the difference between working more in character, creating a low-rent version of street and suburban life, and creating songs that, as Pitchfork's Stephen Deusner observed, "Finn's characters might want to listen to."
One way in which Finn does this is by ratcheting up the force and power of the music, layering guitar and trebly keys and multiple hooks on top of one another like a mid-1970s E Street Band or an E-boosted Happy Mondays. It's rock'n'roll before it was ashamed to do either, and unlike on past efforts, lyrics can sometimes be summed up by lines that approximate the effect of a chorus, even if they're presented more like a thesis statement: "I've had kisses that make Judas seem sincere," "When they kiss they spit white noise," the aforementioned "Gonna walk around and drink some more."
The lack of specificity also means Finn is acknowledging the universality of his themes, which-- although he's still mostly writing about the Twin Cities-- reflect the experiences of kids across the country. Whereas Finn's spiritual predecessors, Bruce Springsteen and Jack Kerouac (whose On the Road lends the album its title), romanticized the open road and the possibility of escape, his characters travel not to start again or get away but as a diversion, as on "Chillout Tent", in which a pair of kids so desperate for something big to happen in their otherwise humdrum lives-- he on his "first day off in forever, man" and she on a break from her studies-- awkwardly try to squeeze as much decadence as possible into a single afternoon.
Finn is less a 21st century Springsteen than he is an American Jarvis Cocker; he's the poet laureate for the U.S.'s have-nots in much the same way the Pulp singer was for the UK's common people in the 1990s. Unlike Cocker, however, Finn doesn't write angrily, perhaps a telling indication that the stereotypically British self-loathing is equitable to the "colossal expectations" and lack of discipline of the boys and girls in America. Just as one wouldn't imagine Cocker writing escapist fantasies such as "Chillout Tent", nor would Finn pen something as bitter as "I Spy".
In a sense, however, this album, thematically, is as self-aware as Cocker's work at his height of fame-- the ambitious, zeitgeist-grabbing Different Class and hangover album This Is Hardcore. But rather than moan about too many nights on the tiles, Finn channels his diminishing energy into characters older and younger than himself: His epitaph for Berryman ("he was drunk and exhausted but he was critically acclaimed and respected") and Holly's laments over stoner burnout in "First Night" could both be read as autobiographical.
They could also be seen as a lament for the type of music Finn's making, the straightforward arena rock that, these days, often settles for critical acclaim and respect rather than connecting with lots and lots of people. For all of Finn's holding his lyrics at arm's length here, he remains one of the best writers in rock, demonstrating grit and spunk and wit and intelligence in each track. Unlike many of those who've translated big, arena-ready guitars into arena-sized audiences, Finn doesn't resort to confidently sung platitudes like "It's a beautiful day!", "Look at the stars/ See how they shine for you," or "I'm not OK." He not only has a commanding, rousing voice but he also says something worth hearing, displaying gifts for both scope and depth that are all too rare in contemporary rock-- indie or mainstream.
