The Hold Steady - "Stay Positive"

The Hold Steady - Constructive Summer (Removed by request) (Vagrant 2008)

The Hold Steady - Stay Positive / Vagrant

Because we've recently been on this indefinite hiatus (Remember: 2008, the year we made it safe to blog as a hobby again), I've afforded myself the opportunity to go back and enjoy some older music in addition to some of the fresh stuff coming out without the added burden of writing about it. It would be dishonest to say that I haven't also been indulging the white-boy indie-rock inner me, and a product of this is listening to a lot of Springsteen-sounding records - and that includes Tunnel of Love (1987), which I doubt any member of The War on Drugs has heard. I haven't delved that deep into the last Springsteen-aping sextet to grace the head of the Forkcast (because how far do you really need to go to understand the depth of youthful innocence?), but if there's one band that stands head and shoulders above the rest of this crop, it's Brooklyn's The Hold Steady.

Except that when I gave Stay Positive a listen, I found myself thinking of every friend I had who loved The Hold Steady on Boys and Girls in America, and then thinking that they would love this album a lot more than I am loving it now. I don't know what it was about Boys and Girls that struck me (I think its name was "Chips Ahoy"), but as opposed to the marked step of concise clarity that put their sophomore album a step ahead of Separation Sunday, this album feels like treading water. Or rather, it feels less genuine. There's no enthusiasm when you're running through the motions.

In honor of that, I rediscovered during a move this weekend (which I'll spare you the details of) that I still had my Hold Steady Song Generator™ packed away from '06. I blew off the dust and put some new batteries in it, and look it here: The sucker still works.

"Boys of Summer"

Snow finally melts on these rustic plains
Norfolk Southern calls out all their trains
and my friends hit the tracks to find more booze
convinced like me we've got nothin' to lose

We drank the rock quarry dry every night
My girl kickin' back Jack, man, what a sight
it was to see those trains take off
as i fought a recurring smoker's cough

And my girl never drinks a little too much
And the Twins never win (No!) in the clutch
Woo-oo-woo-hoo-hoo! (x3)

[Guitar/Piano solo, optional backing horns]

Damaged goods in the bottom of the ninth
Bar's closing up but we still got half our pints
and I'm like, hey Joe, here's a decent tip
as each of us takes one long last sip

Moaning, droning, yeah we're watching the game
As another Morneau hit pop flies out the same
You boys of summer keep livin' your dream
as our livers slowly run out of steam, yeah

And my girl never drinks a little too much
And the Twins never win (No!) in the clutch
Woo-oo-woo-hoo-hoo! (x3)

Hey Joe, maybe next year when the White Sox blow it

[Powerful outro strum]

And you know what the saddest part about that is? That thing took about ten minutes to make, and it reads as good as any couplet on Stay Positive. I won't say it's a bad album - of course it's not, because its hooks are catchy and its themes are universal - but it doesn't capture the urgency, the desperation of being in a dead-end small town. It doesn't even capture the resignation that well. It just sounds like resignation. Maybe that's the greatest artistic triumph of this album: Resignation. The title begs for a witticism here, but by now you will have heard enough of them. I'll spare you that, too.