The Hold Steady
The Hold Steady
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Sometimes only a cold beer will suffice — cracked open in the company of old friends at a bar where time once stood still; where every awkward guy fell in love with every awkward girl at least once, like an incestuous family of unshaven music-store clerks and recovering indie rockers. The gospel of which has been written by the Hold Steady since 2000, the year frontman hero Craig Finn left the arty punk of Lifter Puller behind for a promising life of preaching slurred beat poetry to a converted congregation of cool kids. Like a happy hour that doesn't end until the bar-back's mopping the floor, the Kerouac-cribbing Boys and Girls in America and its pair of suds-and-buds predecessors carry a happy-go-drunky tune of all-American riffs, the likes of which we haven't heard since Springsteen first walked down E-Street.
$17.85
Name Time Price 1 Chips Ahoy 3:09 $1.29 View In iTunes 2 Your Little Hoodrat Friend 3:54 $0.99 View In iTunes 3 Hurricane J 3:02 $1.29 View In iTunes 4 Sequestered In Memphis 3:32 $1.29 View In iTunes 5 Stuck Between Stations 4:10 $1.29 View In iTunes 6 Hornets! Hornets! 4:49 $0.99 View In iTunes 7 Constructive Summer 2:55 $1.29 View In iTunes 8 The Swish 4:08 $0.99 View In iTunes 9 The Weekenders 3:48 $1.29 View In iTunes 10 Knuckles 3:45 $0.99 View In iTunes 11 Party Pit 3:56 $1.29 View In iTunes 12 Most People Are DJs 5:50 $0.99 View In iTunes 13 Stevie Nix 5:28 $1.29 View In iTunes 14 Lord, I'm Discouraged 5:07 $1.29 View In iTunes 15 The Smidge 3:22 $1.29 View In iTunes Total: 15 Songs
Customer Reviews
So much Joy in listening to the Hold Steady
Rock via the Midwest to the East Coast and back. The Hold Steady is a band with a theme, structure and groove that is incomparable. On each album of songs the group has expanded their horizons both lyrically and musically allowing their listeners to grow with them. While the music is reminiscent of the Replacements and Bruce Springsteen, it is clearly its own. The vocals become part of the rhythm section and allows the guitar and keyboards to dance around the various musical themes within each song. With Craig Finn's rough vocals and the "sing-along" refrains, The Hold Steady's sound is uniquely their own. The lyrics are something even more. The sometimes linked stories on the various albums cry out with joy in the midst of the struggles of life. Add-in recurring characters and faith issues and you have the rock music equivalent of a Flannery O'Connor short story or a Graham Greene novel. Because they are great "sing-along" songs you don't have to think about any of that, you can simply sing along.
Itunes -- The Hold Steady deserves more than just 15 essential songs from their catalog.
