The Hold Steady Stay Positive by: Ed Butler Thu:28-Aug-08 Label: Vagrant Year: 2008 WB rating 87 out of 100

By any contemporary reckoning, The Hold Steady should not be successful. A bunch of middle-aged misfit Springsteen fans punching out straight-up classic rock in 2008 goes against the grain, to say the least. Indie hipsters the world over have apparently simultaneously developed a severe allergy to the saxophone, the Gods of Cool decreeing that the current retro rock that is permitted to remain in vogue is restricted to the softer variety. Vocal harmonies, while not compulsory, are certainly encouraged.

It is delightful then, when, on the first song of Stay Positive, ‘Constructive Summer’, the collective members of The Hold Steady shout “This Summer!” and there is no harmony, but immeasurable cohesion. It doesn’t matter that they don’t hit the same notes, or any notes at all. It doesn’t matter that Craig Finn doesn’t even try to sing properly. Their lack of cool is their greatest asset. Uncool is, thanks to such a beautiful absence of pretension, cool again.

Strangely, Stay Positive is The Hold Steady truly maturing. Finn’s lyrics still veer into his standard irretrievable morbidity, populated by a similar cast of characters including some familiar faces, but now there exists a glimmer of hope. The misery and drudgery are still there, and never more so than the chorus of ‘Sequestered in Memphis’, where Finn’s paramour suffers a familiar problem; “In barlight, she was alright/In daylight, she looked desperate/That’s OK, I was desperate too.” That’s the Hold Steady, always settling for what’s available.

But for every drug and alcohol-addled wreck there are gems like “Let this be my annual reminder/That we can all be something bigger.” It is the sound of the contentment that only the promise of a retirement fund can offer. Where the Hold Steady emerge victorious, however, is their refusal to relent to the inevitable laziness. After all, anyone who can write a chorus like “Subpoenaed in Texas/Sequestered in Memphis” is certainly not taking it easy. Finn, who has always veered dangerously close to overdoing his lyrical complexities, is consistently thrilling here. When not weaving rhymes that just ought not to rhyme, he is telling tales with a narrative verve that Chaucer would have stood and applauded.

Of course, there is still rock, and there are still ballads, but there is added flavour. ‘Navy Sheets’ features retro-techno synths, ‘One for the Cutters’ features a harpsichord, and both still rock in the same momentous manner. ‘Lord I’m Discouraged’ serves an identical purpose to ‘First Night’ from 2006’s Boys and Girls in America, a towering, heartfelt centerpiece that rips the heart out and beats it around with a cricket bat for five minutes. This incarnation, though, features a triumphant fingertapping guitar solo that somehow manages to add poignancy.

While The Hold Steady are verging on stadium success, they just don’t make music for stadiums. They make music for bars. Dark, sticky, basement bars. The very places it seems the members of the band are inclined to frequent. Not cool bars, not hip bars. Bars where the denizens the band choose to represent would feel at home; bars where no-one is cool. While not the exhilarating masterpiece that was Boys and Girls…, Stay Positive is the right album for 2008. It will shake out of their reverie those who have spent too much time salivating over Fleet Foxes and Bon Iver, sublime as they are. Rock and roll is alive. It is permitted to be mature, intelligent, verbose and utterly exhilarating. And you are instructed to listen to this record.