Stay Positive Album Review

Well I finally got a copy of The New Hold Steady Album, Stay Positive. How did I get it early, you ask? Um… Itunes…yeah…Itunes, that’s it. Regardless, I have the album, and have been listening to it non-stop for the last couple of days. My first impression was not as strong as my impression of “Stuck between stations,” or “Chip’s Ahoy” from Boys and Girls of America. Go back to my post about concerts and scroll down to the Hold Steady section, and re-watch the live performance of Stuck Between Stations. In re-reading that post, I realized that that video was by and large the best one.

But back to the album. It didn’t have that initial hook that the last one did, but I gave it a couple more listens. The reason that this is probably my favourite Hold Steady album – aside from the initial love of it – is that it draws heavily from their first three albums. Little references here and there, old lyrics recycled and made new. Whether talking about “killer parties,” “Emore (spelling?) City,” and “Whoever’s gonna get you the highest,” the Hold Steady does a great job of using these old images from their previous albums and making them new and fresh.

In the same way, this new Hold Steady album is great in a lot of the ways that the new Death Cab album is great. They’ve gone back to the religion vs rock and roll content of their first two albums, but they’ve clearly gotten better as a band as well. Almost Killed Me and Separation Sunday are fantastic albums, but their slightly unpolished, and Craig Finn was making no attempt to sing. Boys and Girls was a fantastically catchy album, that still had great lyrics (“There was that night that John Berryman thought that he could fly, but he didn’t so he died”  or this one, which gets me everytime:

He said “I’ve surrounded myself with doctors
And deep thinkers.
But big heads with soft bodies
Make for lousy lovers.”)

but didn’t have that same grit of the first two albums. This one pulls it all together.

Now I know that some of you just are not going to get past Craig Finn’s voice, which is sad for you, but there you go.

I think that one reason I really love bands like Death Cab, The Decemberists, and The Hold Steady, is because their lyrics are so easily recognizable and quoteable. I mean, you can read these lyrics off of the page and hear the music easily with them. The music and the lyrics are inseparable. Take this Decemberists Lyric for example, from the Crane Wife Album: She’s grand, the bend of her hand diggin deep into the sweep of the sand.

So go buy the new album on Itunes. Definitely do NOT, I repeat, NOT download a copy of the leaked album via torrent download. Or buy the album when it comes out in July – which I’ll be doing as well.

~ by aeqvitas on June 20, 2008.