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by Nick Christian As an angsty teenager-yearning-to-be-a-man I spent an unhealthy number of hours listening to Counting Crows* at high volume, shouting along to lyrics about the desperate blackness of life. Their music – like – it spoke to my – like – soul. Now I’m an angsty early twenties(er)-yearning-to-be-a-man my music taste has improved but it hasn’t made an Anakin Skywalker to Darth Vader scale transformation. I still like the twangy sound of steel-string guitars against shouty American accents, gently aching piano melodies next to aggressively simplistic chord progression. So I like The Hold Steady. The Hold Steady is Counting Crows for grown-ups. Bit of a backhanded complement, but that’s where I put them. In the main, Boys and Girls is Americana of the college-rock variety, fitting in rather nicely with the likes of Fountains of Wayne, The Shins, Rogue Wave, Ben Folds, Ryan Adams (sort of) and a few others. That is to say, it’s good Americana: big and brash and masculine, with foot-stamping rhythms (because American college kids don’t dance in my experience) and shout-along choruses. The Hold Steady have made a record that feels just like a third album should. Making no radical departures from the well-served formula, the album, while not familiar, is immediately comfortable. As the long winter nights and dull dark days chillily continue, ‘comfortable’ is not an attribute to be scoffed. Tea is comfortable; slippers are comfortable. Mmm…. tea and slippers. So in all the right places it’s a relaxed record. Sure that means all the songs pretty much sound the same from ‘Stuck Between Stations’ to ‘Southtown Girls’ but that doesn’t have to be a bad thing. Maybe it usually is but not here as the consistency gives it the full package feel. The sensitively furious riffs and ivory amblings alternate a little, occasionally the moods mutate marginally one way or the other and every now and again you get a different line of catchy chorus to sing along to but essentially it’s a record carved from a single piece of rock. What kind of rock I wouldn’t dare speculate; I didn’t do geology at school. Although there are indeed no blistering barnstormers of the quality of Almost Killed Me’s ‘Killer Parties’, a few tracks do stick their heads above the parapet (mixed metaphors all over the fucking place here) namely ‘Chips Ahoy’, ‘You Can Make Him Like You’ and ‘Massive Nights’ with its harmonized refrain and “Whoa –oooo-ooo”s all over the place. Boys and Girls is not gonna make you stop what you’re doing to listen but it is gonna make you listen. *N.B
With the benefit of years (and counselling) I’m perfectly willing
to acknowledge that even one hour might be deemed an unhealthy amount
of Counting Crows. |
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SJ Esau - Wrong Faced Cat Food Collapse The Hold Steady – Boys and Girls in America Isis – In The Absence of Truth
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THE
HOLD STEADY - BOYS AND GIRLS IN