Review:

on 2011-07-22 CharlesMartel Said:

Big things started happening to the Hold Steady in 2006. "Boys and Girls in America" brought the band the recognition they deserved. Their straightforward brand of bar-room rock, with sharp and clever lyrics about the perils and pitfalls and dreadfully mundane lives of ordinary teenagers started to bring some close critical attention to them. The band became the darlings of some of the music press in the UK. But that is always a bad sign.

"Stay Positive" is their fourth album. And never let it be said that the Hold Steady changed a winning formula - position band between Bruce Springsteen and the latest US alt-country act, wind up and let go. Look at it this way, pretty much every Hold Steady track is the same. Some high school kid remembers this crazy chick he met while she remembers debating whether the time was right to lose her virginity. Then someone gets high. Another person gets drunk. The girls breaks down in floods of tears. Is this all there is to life?

And if every track is the same, then so is every album. Make sure the album carries on the theme of the band's music - the lives of Holly, Gideon and Charlemagne. Start with a thumper  "Hornets Hornets"/"Stuck Between Stations"/"Constructive Summer". Then, put the first single, issued before the album comes out, on second - "Cattle and the Creeping Things"/"Chips Ahoy"/"Sequestered in Memphis". Next, make sure there are plenty of call-backs and sing-along refrains. Occasionally, recycle lines from previous albums  "when the chaperone crowned us the King and Queen" anyone? And there you have it - a typical Hold Steady album.

Well, "Stay Positive" manages to live up to this almost stereotypical view of the band and, at the same time, go against the grain. The same broad theme is apparent: disaffected kids and their lives; drugs; alcohol; sex; and religion. This is drinking music for the thinking person. But this time the usual characters are noticeable by their absence (unless you count the three tracks at the end of this bonus edition where Holly, Gideon and Charlemagne all put in an appearance). But there is another difference. The kids have moved on. This is no longer so much about high school as about college. This album is more about growing up than previously. Perhaps that's why the characters of the previous three albums no longer feature, at least by name.

And the songs themselves? Well, foot-stomping drums, catchy guitar hooks and solid keyboards all back Craig Finn's semi-spoken vocals. But the lyrics and music have undergone a maturing of their own. Synthesisers put in an appearance. A harpsichord enters the fray on "One for the Cutters" as the lyrics tell of a girl so desperate that she takes the dangerous step of partying with townies. And the in-jokes are different too. In "Joke About Jamaica", laden with references to no less than five Led Zeppelin songs as the band show their roots like a middle aged woman who cannot be bothered to use hair colour to mask her greys any more, Finn sings:

"They used to think it was so cute when she said Dire Maker
All the boys knew it was a joke about Jamaica"

Yet like the girl in that song, who finds getting older brings with it drawbacks as well as advantages, the Hold Steady's fourth album sees the drawbacks increasing as the years advance. Up to now the Hold Steady have been a one-trick pony, a very successful one, but a one trick pony nonetheless. Broadening the repertoire is a risky business. One leaves behind the safety of familiarity but hopes for greater things with expanding horizons. Unfortunately, we have become so accustomed to the Hold Steady's tales of familiar characters that they have become like a typecast actor, unable to continue for fear of becoming stale; unable to branch out for fear of inviting comparisons with what has gone before. Don't get me wrong, this is still good solid, bar-room rock. But it has lost some of its edginess and some of its raw panache. The Hold Steady are growing up, and slowly losing some of their charm as they do so.
Rating: 7/10