The Hold Steady (The Academy, Dublin)
Review by James Hendicott
Photos by Kieran Frost
Geek chic. A modern-day,copyright-safe bow to Springsteen. Intimate musical storytellers, in the heartfelt yet upbeat sense of the idea. Spend five minutes in front of a stage containing The Hold Steady and it soon becomes clear that every one of the well-worn, oft-repeated clichés the group have won themselves over the past half a decade or so are absolutely bang on the mark. Craig Finn’s stage mannerisms might be a touch like your socially inept uncle trying to dance to the sneaky heavier track slipped onto a wedding reception playlist – at certain points he seems to be attempting to personally acknowledge every member of The Academy crowd within the length of one song – but the sound The Hold Steady reel out more than makes up for the awkward mannerisms.
Media attention has shown a fairly consistent decline for the Brooklyn four-piece since their rush of hype around ’06, but there’s been no let up on the more important aspect of their existence: quality tracks, and a vocal cult fan base that’s steadily grown, elevating every album higher than the last on the US Billboard charts. The reason? The Hold Steady’s lyrics read like an emotionally evolved, poetic story, sucking the listener in with tales that make the music more of a mechanism, an aid to delivering Finn’s film-worthy imagery to a wider audience.
That message is largely apolitical, and when it does delve into its deeper twists, largely sticks to what seems to be the band slogan, ‘Stay Positive’: this is a lyrical lesson in how the New Yorkers think life should be lived, or has already been lived. Singles ‘Chips Ahoy!’, ‘Hurricane J’ and ‘Stuck Between Stations’ are all given an airing, yet The Hold Steady have never been a singles band. In fact, they’ve never been much of anything conventional whatsoever. On tonight’s evidence, Finn’s infamous ‘World’s Best Bar Band’ assessment of his group seems fair: what they do is musically simple, strangely accessible and a million miles from anything else you’ll find on a stage this size. Simple, yes, but highly affective.
In truth, Finn isn’t even a particularly good singer. That’s not to say that he’s a bad vocalist, just that in a live setting, his words rarely stray from tonally varied spoken word chanted compulsively against a stark rock backdrop. It’s a slow building set in which the personal efforts – ‘South Town’ and opener ‘Constructive’ have Finn clutching his head like he’s suffering an intense emo-migraine for putting them out there. The comic twist of tracks like ‘Stevie Nicks’ and the less than inspiring generalizations of ‘Status’ (“men go for looks, girls go for status”) – in which the over-the-pond pronunciation of the name is hard to ignore – are low points. ‘Status’ in particular reminds of a cheesy Barenaked Ladies track (though it’s hard to imagine The Hold Steady ever going down the ‘One Week’ road or writing the desperate title track to a comedy like ‘Big Bang Theory’), but the set’s quickly dragged back on track with heavy, outgoing numbers like ‘Hoodrat’.
Perhaps the strange yet accessible sound is where the appeal lies: tonight’s Academy crowd has the oldest average age we’ve seen in the venue for some time, but they’re collectively rocking the place out like teenagers who’ve fuelled up on cider outside. Hold Steady’s only expectations fall on the intelligence of their lyrics, and the ability to back them up with sharp, often surprisingly hefty chord transitions. They’re unlikely to return to the media spotlight anytime soon; their rise – and incomparable, almost childlike live shows – will continue regardless.
