Boys and Girls In America

As much as people may bemoan the loss of creative integrity in music these days, we live in privileged times. Rarely before now has there been an era where so many brilliant arists roamed the country. It's a lofty group really, with members like Wilco, Sufjan Stevens, Ryan Adams, My Morning Jacket, Okkervil River, TV On the Radio, Ghostface Killah, The Decemberists, Cat Power, The National, and dozens more. But the band among these that seems most destined for transcendence, for a legacy, aside from maybe Wilco, is The Hold Steady. They're only three albums old, but each album has further defined their sound, and each one is better than the last, that last album being the astonishingly brilliant Boys and Girls in America. It's been reviewed numerous times, and, while this one is a tad late, it's far from extraneous. Not enough can be said about how perfect this album is.

Album Review: Boys and Girls in America

The Hold Steady have done it. They've written the perfect rock and roll album. They flirte with perfection on their last two, the very bar-rockin' Almost Killed Me and the dense, conceptual work Separation Sunday. While each of these albums is a work in their own right, they can't compete with Boys and Girls in America. Taking it's name from a passage in On the Road, the album is a meditation on youth, drugs, music, and inspiration. While Boys and Girls may not contain The Hold Steady's single best moment (that honor goes to "Killer Parties," from Almost Killed Me), it holds great moments, and a lot of them.

The album opens with "Stuck Between Stations," which contains the eponymous Kerouac quotation and tells the story of Minneapolis poet John Berryman's suicide. The song is at once bombastic and lonely, hyper-literate and visceral. It strikes to the very core, perfectly simulates the feeling of walking alone through a big city, drunk and ragged. Lead singer Craig Finn's wordplay is nothing short of phenomenal, and his voice fits exactly with the loud, just straight up rockin' music behind it. Upon first hearing this song, one worries that they placed their best track too early in the album.

WRONG, motherfucker! It's followed with what could well be the greatest pop-rock song of this decade, "Chips Ahoy," the story of a prescient girl who uses her gift to win at the track. It's catchy as all hell, and almost too perfect to be put into words. Every little touch in this song is just plain right, from the organ fills to the "woah-oh-oh's" behind the telling chorus of "How am I supposed to know if you're high if you won't let me touch you." This song is a microcosm of everything The Hold Steady aspires to be, examining love, drugs, and sounding beautiful and knowing all at once.

"Chips Ahoy" is followed by "Hot Soft Light," a song about, as Craig Finn has put it, getting busted. Tad Kublers muscular guitar riff propels the song as Craig Finn's protestations grow more desperate and indignant, while keyboardist Franz Nicolay (who, coincidentally, may be the coolest person ever) pounds away.

Up next is one of the albums two missteps, "Same Kooks." To put it bluntly, I don't like this song much. It seems to take the "Hot Soft Light" formula and attempts to speed it up by about three times. It would be a decent song for most other bands, but on an album this great, it stands out as being exceptionally weak.

However, any doubt cast on the album by "Same Kooks" is immediately dispelled by the next song, "First Night." Fuckin' A, they knocked this one out of the park. For one, it's placement is pretty much perfect. After four solid rock songs, a ballad seems right at home. But this is no simple ballad. This piano driven work revisits Holly, Charlemagne, and Gideon, characters from the previous album, Separation Sunday. It's a beautiful song, rivaling even "Thunder Road" as a rock ballad. The climax takes it far and away from all other songs in its vein. The electric guitar coming in, the violin, the piano, Craig Finn's voice...it's beyond words.

"Party Pit" is up next, and, well, it's not as good as the track preceding it. However, I'm not sure any song on this album could measure up. There's less to say about "Party Pit" than a lot of the other songs on the album. It's the kind of song The Hold Steady excell at, and perfected on Separation Sunday, a hooky rock song with a great chorus about living in Minneapolis. It's solid, and fun to listen to, but not transcendent.

The next song, "You Can Make Him Like You" follows in the same vein, although te subject seems slightly more intriguing, about girls who define their very existences by their boyfriends. It's yet another strong song, hyper-catchy and suited to being played as loud as the speakers'll go.

"Massive Nights" is next, and could almost function as a sequel to "Chips Ahoy," with it's awesome chorus and the "woah-oh-oh" chanting behind it. It's The Hold Steady's prom song, the type that would be in a high-school movie. Too bad no high-school movie is good or self-aware enough to have this song. Someday, hopefully. Hell, a whole movie could be based around the prospect of having The Hold Steady provide the soundtrack. "Massive Nights" is perhaps their quintessential summer song, suited perfectly for slightly drunk, slightly stoned, and exceedingly happy.

The album takes a considerably more sober turn with Citrus, a song based almost entirely on the acoustic guitar and accordion. It's an ode to alcohol and awkward young love viewed through jaded eyes. It's poignant, sad, insightful, a tiny bit dark, and mostly hopeful. It's not about the destructive power of drink. Quite the opposite in fact. It expounds the power of booze to bring people together in a sad, harsh world.

However, the album does have one more misstep in it, the second to last song, "Chillout Tent." It's a narrative about a boy and a girl meeting after ODing at a music festival, hooking up, and never seeing again. Sounds kind of promising, but it comes off as banal and uninteresting, damaged further by the guest vocalists. The Hold Steady doesn't work without Craig Finn's rough voice in front of it. There are some good lines to be found, lines like "They started kissing when the nurses took off their IV's, it was kinda sexy, but it was kinda creepy," but, of course, these redeeming lines are all spoken by Finn. It's not quite a throwaway, but it lacks the spark that runs through the album.

Everything comes to a close with "Southtown Girls," an paean to settling for less. It begins with the whole band singing the chorus a capella, followed, after a pregnant pause, by an organ-kissed blast of electric guitar, closed with a Springsteen-esque harmonica solo from Nicolay. It's exactly the song needed to close the album. The Hold Steady specializes in excellent closers, with "Killer Parties" on Almost Killed Me, and "How a Resurrection Really Feels" on Separation Sunday. "Southtown Girls" continues the pattern in grand, tired, cathartic closing tracks, and finishes the album in grand fashion.

The Hold Steady are what rock and roll is supposed to be about, five guys who look like high-school teachers having what is very obviously the time of their life doing this. There's no pretension in their music, no backstories to be aware of. It's music for everyone, from nineteen year old hipsters to dockworkers. The Hold Steady understands that music is supposed to be something fun, and that's a fucking beautiful thing.