\\ Blue Box – “This is all a tape-recording" //

*aged 40+

Off the booze after a month dabbling in mild organ failure, seems I’ve decided now’s the time to get into The Hold Steady. To my poptimist sponsors, I’m sorry, my sublime femme reading of Bruce Springsteen is in the post.

I’ve mostly been sticking to the early and late extremes because I’m Hyden-pilled and the ones with more keyboard do sound better.

Now GBV and The Breeders have always felt like the booziest rock to me, and not just because I know about Bob Pollard holding a bottle or Kim Deal flying separate from the band and the bevvy. Something about how it all sounds like someone trying to listen to/play Led Zepplin or The Who after too many cans. The odd structures and phrasings, sure, but also a certain thinness to the sound — the way the world narrows when you’ve got proper drink on, planing off anxiety but also yr basic instincts for self-preservation.

Anyway, that’s not The Hold Steady. The early stuff has a beery stomp to it — the shape of rock radio if not the sheer virtuosity — but it’s always a wider world, full of writing that wants to be remembered (hey, he’s talking about that guy from that song in this one).

(Not a complaint: I grew up on the X-Men, remembering things is a core skill, but as an old man in a rock crowd I need all the help I can get.)

Anyway, maybe that’s why The Hold Steady makes for good annoyingly/freshly sober person music. Lots of talk about the dumb trips people end up on and enough of that pigheadedness to make it sing, but also a clear distance between the music and what it’s all about.