Hold Steady - Heaven Is Whenever - Page 2

Yeah, I'm gonna have to duct-tape my penis like a mummy to keep it from exploding when I go see them at the El Rey.

I can see hating the experience of seeing them live, because their following has most definitely gotten douchier over the years - but your ex-co-worker must not have been watching the band much.

Or, he/she is an idiot.

Or he/she was trying to avoid getting stepped/beered on or elbowed by assholes. Pity the short and female at a Hold Steady show - it's dangerous.

fuck I guess I'd better take a different homegirl then

no! Wait!!!

I've seen them twice and I've never experienced anything different that seeing any other band that plays power chord rock n roll. In fact, I've found their crowds to be generally pretty nice (a few typical drunken assholes aside). And it takes a somewhat unimaginative brain to be unable to sort out the experience of going to a show with the band and the music they're playing.

I mean, I've seen drunken douchebags elbow short girls in the face at Belle & Sebastian for Christs sake.

At the last Hold Steady show I went to, I saw a girl get kicked in the face and another have beer spilled down her front thanks to an asshole crowd-surfer. At the same show, I got shoved around by some creeps who wanted to be ten feet closer to the stage. I would love to see them play in a venue with seats. Not for the sitting, mind you, but so everyone has their little, defensible spot.

I can see what you're saying about separating the show from the music. But don't you think that some performers are inextricably intertwined with the experience of seeing them live? Also, we'd like to pretend we're made of stern stuff, but if I was that girl who got kicked in the face, I'd have a hard, hard time listening to The Hold Steady for a while after that.

o_O

"WOOO! WRAPPED UP IN BOOKS! WOOOO!" :: rhythmic finger-pointing ::

To be fair, the last time I saw them was a place with seats, and yeah, that probably helped with the douche control. And if anyone gets hurt during a show, (especially kicked in the face) I can totally understand that putting a damper on the music.

That's actually pretty accurate! More like "PLAY TRACK AND FIELD! FUCKING STARS OF TRACK AND FIELD!" And then shoving people out of the way when they did play it so he could get a better look at the stage. Halfway through the song he danced (there was no room to dance) and elbowed people, one girl in the face. She complained but all he could do was yell out "I LOVE THIS FUCKING SONG!" The guy was like nine feet tall, too. He might have actually been a star of track and field for all I know. But he was definitely a douchebag.

But...but that's how he sings/speaks on the records too. Why exactly did your ex-coworker/friend get turned around by them?

I can't wait for this album. I love all the songs so far, which I think was pre-determined based on my love for the band. Separation Sunday is an album I can put on and listen to start to finish and it feels like its only been on for 10 minutes

Saw them last night. New songs sound fantastic. Definitely less anthemic, but it's nice to see some of the regular characters showing up again.

I managed to grab one of the limited RSD copies of the Heaven is Whenever LPs. It sounds great and I really love it, but it is (all in all) a more subtle album than they've done in the past, but they also show some real growth as well. Honestly, side B features more of the typical Hold Steady songs (like Hurricane J, Barely Breathing and Our Whole Lives) but the slower tunes and ballads (like We Can Get Together and Sweet Part of the City) don't disappoint either.

All in all, I like how tight the record is. Ten songs, all relatively short, and they all stick with you one way or another, and the flow is great too. It's short, sweet and powerful. As good as I thought Stay Positive was, there was definitely some fat that could have been trimmed here and there. This album, as soon as its over I want to spin it again. Great stuff.

"Heaven is whenever we get together, sit down on your floor and listen to those records."

I dropped by one of my local Record Store Day participants and was informed that the limited edition copies of Heaven is Whenever went in the first hour. Nerts.

Wait. Really? No one has come in here to say that Heaven Is Whenever is streaming at NPR? Is it because you're all listening to it and are, consequently, frozen in place with joy?

I think this one and Boys and Girls in America are going to have to arm-wrestle to prove which one loves me more. Shirtless. After they've bought me drinks.

Yeah I've been listening to it, and I was going to come in here and post it, but looks like I was beaten to it.

I thought you'd have already been all over this with a chainsaw, MissZ.

My first thought, when I heard that, was "people still listen to records?" And then remembered my 12-and 13-year-old vinyl fetishist nephews. What goes around...

Much as I love this band, I always find it weird that their nostalgic romanticism seems so much of a piece with my own adolescence, which was one damn long time ago. I just don't expect a band of the '00's to be hitting me in the same places that people like Graham Parker, Garland Jeffreys, Willy DeVille, or David Johansen used to (to say nothing of you-know-who): romanticized cityscapes, messy Catholicism, those kids in the street, and the notion that just getting that kiss is a goal and a triumph in itself.

"You can't kiss every girl / You gotta trust me on this one."

Heh. I think I just wrote my Special Edition review.

Considering I bought and listened to the album on vinyl on Record Store Day... yeah, people still listen to records. I didn't bat an eyelash at that line.

Maybe I'm sentimental, but the transition and struggles between adolescence and adulthood is always interesting material to me when handled well, and the Hold Steady handles it with the best of them.

I hope that when I get a little older and there is a band that sounds like anything like the Hold Steady, or I guess I should say, that features lyrics that connects me to my adolescence in the same way theirs does, I'll still dig it just as much despite the distance. But who knows?

One could argue that their perspective is through very adult lenses, which may be why it's so appealing to most of us. I'm just a few years younger than Craig Finn, so it makes sense that I'd be sort of on the same page as him.

I'm more curious if his songs about really young people probably appeal to really young people as much as they do those of us who remember (and possibly romanticize a bit) being really young people. Or is it weird for kids to listen to these 40-year-old guys sing about their teenage and early 20s misadventures?

Love the new album. I'm not sure I put it up with Boys and Girls, but it's way better than Stay Positive.

Sure-- I acknowledged that I know other younger vinyl junkies. But as a cultural touchstone, "listening to records" feels like a bit of a throwback, and has really since about the mid-90's. Welcome, but suprising (to me, anyway).

Oh, absolutely-- but for a band today to be using so many of the same specific themes and images that I remember from a youth that was, in many ways, very different from today, is remarkable.

That kids who grew up small-town Catholic in the 60's and 70's respond to names of the saints as metaphor isn't surprising-- that such things would still resonate culturally today does surprise me.

In a good way, I hope I don't need to stress.

Yeah, I guess it's somewhat surprising to me too. But there's something about the power of mixing a rock n' roll lifestyle with something spiritual that remains powerful to me. It has to do with the realization that everybody has a religion, even if it doesn't have anything to do with god. What people have in common is that they need to be connected to something larger than themselves. So whether you turn to Christ, become a rabid baseball fan or mythologize the weekend warrior friends from college or High School, these experiences can have the power of faith, belief and salvation behind them.

Further, as someone who was raised Catholic, I can tell you that the nostalgia for some of the more religious overtones can be as powerful as the ones for some of the adolescent beer guzzling, rock blaring party kid shit, mostly because even though I don't buy into any of it, it was a huge part of my life and helped form who I am. I'm guessing that in a way that's why anyone, young and old, connect to this music.

And Dave, I've seen plenty of younger people at Hold Steady shows. I'm guessing it still resonates, despite the age difference.

This album's a monster. The second half is actually stronger than the first. Not sure I can single out a fave, but the chorus and melody to 'Our Whole Lives' is perfection.

The Pitchfork review bothers me because it seems like the reviewer dismisses the album mostly because Finn is still writing about the same old things. Pointing out that he's 38 and writing about young 20-something drinking and partying and how disconnected he is to his audience seems silly considering that he's been writing and singing songs like this from the beginning of the band and that's been part of their appeal. Why is it better that he was doing this at 28 rather than 38? Finn's a storyteller, crafting story-songs out of his own past experiences. Tom Wolfe wrote a novel from the mind of a female college student in his 70's. Get over it. With songs this good, get over it.

I really like how tight the album is, and I really like the flow. It's not their best and it's missing maybe one more huge song (something like Slapped Actress or Constructive Summer) but none of the songs are bad, and that case can't be made for their last one.

So pissed I had to miss them last night. I had fun out with friends doing non-spendy things, but I'd have much rather been in that crowd at the El Rey. Thanks a lot, rent and other unexpected expenses.

Yeah, that review was really weird. No way this album deserved such a low rating.

What's that? Pitchfork gave an inconsistent, nonsensical review on an indie-darling's new album that doesn't sound like their "really indie" stuff? Balderdash.

There's some weird fuckin' hipster backlash for this band, and I seriously don't get it.

I've listened to it several times now and while I like it, it doesn't stick with me the same way their other albums do. There is some really strong stuff here, like "Hurricane J" and "The Weeekenders" but some of it, for the first time in Hold Steady history, sounds a bit tired. That being said, this album does feel very transitional and I haven't lost an ounce of faith in the guys.

I know I'm alone here but I just haven't fallen in love with this album like I have every other one they've released.

It's grown at me. At first I was really disappointed but as some of you have mentioned the second half is really strong. The Smidge is a real dud though. There's some bad transitions from song to song though. They should of worked on We Can Get Together to Hurricane J.

What is it with indie rock and using photos of arms as album covers? There's been an epidemic of the things over the last decade and here's yet another one.

It's an irritatingly ill-defined criticism, too.

"They're just a bar band." Yeah, so were the Replacements.

"They just rip off classic rock." All of the repurposed riffs and winking references (particularly on the first two albums) are as obviously deliberate as sampling in other music that hipsters seldom find fault with.

The one I love best is this uber-hipster criticism that the Hold Steady are, like the Decemberists, a "hipster band." Nothing irritates the uber-hipster as much as anything that reeks of hipsterdom (read: cleverness, overt intellectuality, "whiteness"). The best part about this is that it requires an intensely focused superficiality to reduce the Hold Steady to mere "cleverness" - as if underneath all of that clever, there aren't rock songs that actually rock and lyrics that do far more than just revel in quippy references.

Most Hold Steady detractors I know either have shitty frames of musical reference or dismissed them before they heard a single note of their music based on what they'd read about the band or know of their fans.

The album's even better to listen to with the windows down, smooth-sailing on the road.

The backlash doesn't surprise me. It happened to The Shins, Modest Mouse, Liz Phair...is Arcade Fire next?

Right there from the beginning. Naysayers were irritated by the hype and pointed out the relative simplicity of the band's music and lyrics.

In fact, Kevin Drew even got into the conversation in a Pitchfork interview, ripping on overly-earnest U2-inspired indie bands (Arcade Fire, though not named, was pretty clearly a target here). Which is weird, because Broken Social Scene is at their best when they're big and anthemic in a similar way, IMO.

There's a backlash for every artist you've ever loved, essentially. Some are just less informed than others.

'Tis true. The first huge backlash that took me aback: when Pearl Jam released No Code. And to think that less than two years before they were the biggest band in the world. But it opened up my eyes in a big way. Critics and the general public can be pretty fickle and dismissive without any real reason. I would've passed up so much great material if I had become one of the sheep.

As a wise man once sang: "First they made me King / Then they made me Pope / Then they brought the rope..."