ROCK REVIEW | HOLD STEADY
Ranting Joyfully About a Nation's Woes
By KELEFA SANNEH
Published: January 21, 2005
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/21/arts/ ... oref=login
lenty of great rock 'n' roll songs are little more than a fistful of chords and a few stanzas of memorable words. And on Wednesday night at the Mercury Lounge, the Hold Steady took this notion way past its logical conclusion.
The Hold Steady is led by Craig Finn, who's a great ranter, which is just as well, since he doesn't really sing. Twisting and gesticulating, he unburdened himself of sharp narrative fragments, while his band mates bashed away at simple chord progressions lovingly rescued (or, if you like, stolen) from rock history.
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Before he moved to Brooklyn, Mr. Finn led Lifter Puller, a barbed Minneapolis post-punk band where the guitar lines were sometimes as tangled as his story lines. By contrast, the Hold Steady is his version of a bar band, as he explains in a typically bitter (or is it sweet?) couplet: "She said it's good to see you back in a bar band, baby/I said it's great to see you're still in the bars."
Last year, the group released its thoroughly entertaining debut album, "The Hold Steady Almost Killed Me" (French Kiss), and the members spent much of 2004 playing decreasingly low-profile shows in - where else? - city bars. So Wednesday's concert felt a bit like a victory lap, although Mr. Finn didn't waste any time on self-congratulation. He was too busy paying loving tribute to a half-unraveled country: "Taxmen coming around the back with the Kevlar vests/Militia men cooking up a batch of crystal meth/There's a war going down in the middle west/There's a war going down in the Middle Western states/The Kevlar vests against the crystal flakes." The band's big, old-fashioned racket helped keep Mr. Finn's rants hurtling forward. For "Barfruit Blues," a vivid but hazy ode to rock 'n' roll debauchery ("Mary's got a bloody nose from sniffing margarita mix/She licked her lower lip and then she kissed that halleluiah chick"), the musicians struck up a riff that already sounded familiar back when Guns N' Roses used it in "Paradise City." And "Hostile, Mass.," which is tangentially about New England, sounded almost as good without the irresistible saxophone solo that's included on the album version.
(Since Mr. Finn has mastered the art of furious digression, perhaps he won't complain if this seems like the right time for an aside: for the past few years, there have been hints of a full-blown rock saxophone revival, but it hasn't quite happened yet. Here's hoping 2005 is the year more bands decide they're not afraid to sound as greasy as they look.)
All night long, Mr. Finn did something that seemed guaranteed to thrill his growing New York City fan base: he played new songs, from the band's forthcoming second album. One was titled "Charlemagne in Sweatpants," and over yet another bare-bones chord progression, he declaimed yet another bittersweet tale of wasted nights, pausing only to allow himself a well-earned moment of exultation: "Do you want it like boy meets girl and the rest is history?/Or do you want it like a murder mystery?/'Cause I can tell it either way."
