Album Review: The Hold Steady, Stay Positive

I posted this one on Blogcritics, so I can post it here.

It’s understandable why The Hold Steady wanted to release Stay Positive digitally well over a month before its official release date. The album is so overstuffed with summer jams, ballads of rejection, and meditations on Americana, that it has already succeeded in becoming the definitive summer album of 2008 well before it was even released this week. Stay Positive is also one of those albums with enough diversity in song styles and pure rock transcendence to have us keep coming back to it for as long as we love rock.

Forget the Springsteen comparisons. I’ve always advocated that The Hold Steady’s major influences were the godfathers of alternative rock, in Craig Finn’s native Twin Cities, The Replacements, and especially the oft-forgotten Hüsker Dü. Finn even looks like Huskers guitarist Bob Mould. The influence has never been more apparent than on “Constructive Summer,” a 21st-century response to “Celebrated Summer,” arguably Hüsker Dü’s most famous song.

True, Stay Positive never reaches the titanic heights of Boys and Girls of America, just like New Day Rising didn’t reach the heights of Zen Arcade. But like New Day Rising, Stay Positive takes the populist charm and natural songwriting hinted at by the band’s previous album and streamlines it into one, glorious package. It’s the Hold Steady’s most accessible album yet, one that takes the band out of its bar band roots and puts the band at the forefront of all discussions of rock this decade.

With so many current indie bands trying in vain to break new ground, one of Stay Positive’s greatest charms is the dues it pays to the past. There are nods to Led Zeppelin, Iggy Pop, Joe Strummer directly in the lyrics, as well as in the music. Traces of CCR, the Band, Cream, and even Bob Dylan can be found all over the place. “Constructive Summer” is followed by a tragic tale of romantic desperation in “Sequestered In Memphis,” which leaves the tragedy to subtext.

Though there’s not a bad song on the album, some tracks really do go to levels that rock bands of any breed rarely touch. The devastating “Lord I’m Discouraged” tells the tail of an unattainable women caught in life-destroying circumstances, with the perfect chorus “Excuses and half truths and fortified wine.” “Joke About Jamaica,” the band’s obvious homage to Zeppelin, features some of the finest chops the band has ever displayed that keeps up with the band's heroes.

There hasn’t been a Hold Steady album yet without a mammoth, inspiring ending. On Boys and Girls, the band relied on personal comfort and safety in the face of adversity to carry them out. But here the band truly takes it to another level, with a theatrical, rock operatic final two tracks, "Jamaica" and "Slapped Actress," that take on how the band sees the struggles of making it in a jaded industry. It’s one of the first times the Hold Steady has critically addressed the current state of indie rock, and while this has always been a band quicker to build bridges than burn them, it’s of no small importance that Finn has turned his pen squarely at his peers.

While the Hold Steady has traditionally tended to rely on that pen, this is the first Hold Steady album where Finn is more part of an ensemble than the lead. Stay Positive would be nothing without the foundation provided by Bobby Drake's drums or the tough, disciplined lead guitar of Tad Kubler. The Hold Steady has always been something of anomaly in the indie rock world, but here they become one of a kind. All while still sounding like they’ve been with us forever.