Certainly Upbeat

Well, despite being available for purchase on digital download services already, the new album from The Hold Steady, "Stay Positive," actually arrives in physical form to stores on Tuesday. Coming off the banner of success that was "Boys and Girls in America," you'd think Craig Finn and the guys would be under a tremendous amount of pressure to come up with an equally great follow-up. The only thing is, I'm pretty sure the guys in The Hold Steady are so relaxed and having so much fun the concept of pressure is probably foreign to them.

The couple of initial reactions to "Stay Positive" that I happened to stumble across have plenty of praise for the album. That's with little surprise, actually. Who wouldn't want to keep hyping The Hold Steady after they became indie heroes 2 years back? I think you need to make sure that assessment is completely justified instead of blindly professing your love just because you refuse to admit a favorite band of yours can make a bad album. Now then, I'm not trying to say that "Stay Positive" is a bad album, because it most certainly isn't. Rather I'd just like to work towards trying to calm everybody down about The Hold Steady because if this hype gets much more out of hand the eventual backlash could seriously harm this band. That's something I don't want to see.

"Stay Positive" is by no means a perfect album. It isn't better than "Boys and Girls in America," and probably not even better than "Separation Sunday." It is, by all accounts, the worst Hold Steady album to date. BUT it comes really, really close to attaining the same magic as those past albums. It's like a star athlete playing a game slightly injured but still performing better than almost everybody else on the team. Even The Hold Steady on a bad day are better than some bands on their best.

To their credit, The Hold Steady do attempt some different-sounding things with "Stay Positive," and honestly if they repeated their last album using different notes I'd have a lot more to criticize. Yeah, I thought The Hold Steady were falling into a pattern with their Springsteen-esque sound, and apparently they agreed with me. Sure, there's plenty of familiarity and a few of the songs feel like they could have been written around the same time as "Boys and Girls in America," but there's so much adjustment here you need those sounds to keep you grounded.

Of course a big part of The Hold Steady's appeal are Craig Finn's dynamic lyrics. The stories he tells and the characters he creates are always fascinating on multiple levels, and the wordplay he uses to take us through all of it is genuinely creative. That continues as usual with "Stay Positive," though unlike past albums there's not a clearly running theme or continuing story involving characters. When the band said they wanted to try something a little different, they did so in both the songs and lyrical content, which is pretty much only affected in the storylines as I just mentioned.

Unfortunately I think the songs that change things up the most are the only ones that wind up being hit-or-miss in the end. Starting with the 1-2 punch of "Constructive Summer" and "Sequestered in Memphis," tragedy hits this album early on with the somewhat lagging "One for the Cutters" along with whatever song was after it whose name I don't want to look up because I'd remember it if the song was good enough. And while "Lord, I'm Discouraged" is a solid ballad, I couldn't help but think how I was much more affected by songs like "First Night" and "Citrus" on the last album. But "Yeah Sapphire" and "Both Crosses" immediately hit me and became quick favorites, and all of a sudden we're back on the right track all the way through the finale of "Slapped Actress." Thankfully the weakest tracks are bunched together, because you can skip over them that much easier if need be. Still, it doesn't help much that they occur towards the beginning/middle part of the album as it somewhat ruins the good will achieved by those first couple tracks. As a quick side note, there's also three bonus tracks on the deluxe edition of the album, all of which are lovely but probably serve best in their position as being extras. Taken out of the context of the album, these three songs are pretty satisfying unto themselves but are by no means necessary. Still, if you're a Hold Steady completist, by all means you'll need these songs.

If you're a firm believer in The Hold Steady, "Stay Positive" should do nothing to destroy your faith in them. They've created another special album that's definitely worth your time and money. Just don't expect Craig Finn to musically walk on water and you'll probably be okay. I admire the band for taking some chances here, even though they didn't always work out for the best. And yes, despite the couple of negative-ish comments I've made here, I do have a very "positive" reaction to this album as a whole. It may not wind up among my best-of-the-best albums of this year, but you'll almost certainly see it in some respectable position when I start writing lists in December. Until then, have a very "constructive summer" listening to this album whilst drinking and participating in outdoor activities of a fun nature.

Note: As the label has "reinforcements" out stopping people from posting tracks from the album, here are some old Hold Steady tracks, made that much more excellent by the fact that they're done in an acoustic manner. Please enjoy these instead, and stream the whole album at the link below if you want to know what you're getting into on this new record!

The Hold Steady- Chips Ahoy! (Acoustic on WXPN)
The Hold Steady- Your Little Hoodrat Friend (Acoustic on WXPN)
The Hold Steady- You Can Make Him Like You (Acoustic on WXPN)

Stream the entire album at imeem

Buy "Stay Positive" via iTunes (available now)
Preorder the deluxe edition of "Stay Positive" from Vagrant

Labels: The Hold Steady