Hold Steady, Part II

There is a Replacements song called “Treatment Bound.” It’s a freewheeling number; like most of their stuff it sometimes sounds sloppy and sometimes comes off tight, but most of all is just perpetually threatening to fall off the highwire. It took me a while to realize it, but Paul Westerberg and company weren’t beating their chests or telling fishing stories when they sang, “First thing we do when we pull up / get shiiiiiitfaced drunk / try to sober up.” They didn’t care about labels, hits, or SNL and even if The Mats didn’t live every single line they sang, at least they could have. With the recent release of Teeth Dreams, The Hold Steady’s sixth album, I’ve come to a similar realization about Minnesota-born but Brooklyn-bred group.

Kidding around: the three levels of Rock

I first really got to know Kid Rock on a random weekend during my junior year of college in Madison. It was Saturday, there was weather, and we didn’t have anything better more fun to do so me and my roommates were drinking beer and grilling brats in the backyard we shared with our neighbors. I don’t really remember who, why, or how it happened, but “Cowboy” came over the iPod that was furnishing the soundtrack to our cookout. It’s not like everything stopped, but I think we all had a moment not unlike the first time you drink a beer out of a pink lawn flamingo. It might not make a lick of sense, but it’s awesome nonetheless. For the rest of college that song remained our anthem. It had all the right ingredients: it was badass, it sounded good, and we were the only ones on the block that knew it.

40 Bucks and My Favorite Band

It wasn’t my favorite band, strictly speaking, but Craig Finn is about four fifths of The Hold Steady. And PJ’s Lager house in Detroit may not have been the Nice Nice, but they were only charging ten dollars for cover. So call it 80 percent of my favorite band at 25 percent the price. Either way, I had to go see Finn play Wednesday night because a.) he’s awesome, b.) he just released his first solo album (“Clear Heart Full Eyes”), and c.) it gave me an excuse to get some pretty sweet barbecue. At first I was worried that he would find himself lost without his buddy Tad Kubler. It’s a funny bit of chemistry when a lead singer sets out on his/her own. But hell, if Stevie Nix could do it, there’s no reason Craig Finn can’t. Over 2 hours, Finn showed he could distance himself from his old bands and still evoke that joy, chaos, and fear that marked previous THS and Lifter Puller (another former group) releases.