Finding Positive
(Image courtesy of Flickr user Brooklyn Vegan)
The big music story this week, at least in Indie Rock circles, is the new Hold Steady album. Released as a digital download a few weeks ago to counteract a leak, it was finally spun out to stores on CD this week with 3 bonus tracks (more on that later). And as with any rock stars with a larger than life sound, they’ve received plenty of attention. The new album was given attention by 27 reviewers according to Metacritic, putting them in the same league as Beck, who warranted 26 reviews with his latest, Modern Guilt.
And those reviews were generally gyrating with praise (as one would guess from the 87 score on Metacritic). My favorite is this ridiculousness:
They turn critics into gibbering wrecks unable to write proper reviews and leave us forced to just string together our favourite lyrics like a damn teenage girl scribbles Tokio Hotel choruses onto her bed headboard.
But I don’t think I’m ready to re-carve Craig Finn’s likeness into my arm just yet. A Hold Steady album is like a good character novel turned into a mediocre movie: the movie simply cannot, with its barely sustained glances, offer the character development and insight of the source text. However, the movie can still be fun to watch, grabbing the viewer’s emotions and hurtling them off cliffs as it pleases. This can prompt a deeper exploration: a rewatch, perhaps, or a dive into the book itself.
So right now I’m still at the movie stage of Stay Positive. It’s just ra-ra shout out loud from behind a beer fun, but I haven’t yet discovered the layers buried underneath the requisite Springsteenian bombast. This morning, on the way to work, I had time to slowly open the novel, and I can see the characters start to develop. Finn’s lyrics, half-spoken, half-sung, started to tumble out of the song to dance to the music, nodding to the beat. Soon we’ll sit down and have a conversation, the lyrics and I, and I’ll see that they’re slightly off-rhythm shuffles may be a bit awkward, and lacking shine. They’ll make up for it in color, though, and I’ll find a new Holly or Charlemagne, an old friend I didn’t remember who seems, at times, like a composite of all the downtrodden I’ve ever encountered.
The process is almost as enjoyable as the result.
Incidentally, the only drawback of the album is that the three bonus tracks were all tossed together on a single track. So now I have to find some mp3 editing software and split them up. Annoying.
Stay Positive can be streamed for free at Spinner for the rest of the week.
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