The Hold SteadyBoys and Girls in America
[Rock]
Unloading on The Hold Steady - America's friendliest, cheeriest, tipsiest rock 'n' rollers - feels a lot like bullying the fifteen-year-old kid at school who still thinks pissing himself is funny; it's not pleasant, but someone's got to do it because, you hope, they'll turn out better for it in the end. There comes a point when listening to certain records that you just have to ask yourself, "At what point is imitation no longer flattery? At what point is leeching of another's success just plain wrong?" For sure, Interpol are not Joy Division, Franz Ferdinand are not Gang of Four, Oasis are not The Beatles, but The Hold Steady are Bruce Springsteen & The E-Street Band. Absolutely, unequivocally, The Hold Steady ape the boss, down to a blue-collared, beer-soaked, everyman tee.
Well, almost. Crucially, though front man Craig Finn's tales of idealized Americana occasionally resonate alongside the 'Born to Run's of this world, he doesn't have the wit or lyrical dexterity to consistently blow the mind the way Bruce seems to do so effortlessly. For instance, on opener 'Stuck Between Stations', the impact of some great lines ("She was a real good kisser but she wasn't that strict of a Christian") are lessened by the overriding sense that he's trying a little too hard to be profound ("The devil and John Berryman took a walk together").
On other songs, such as 'Party Pit' or 'Chillout Tent', he doesn't even bother, instead opting for lazy drugs 'n' booze name drops ("His friend gave him four [mushrooms] but he said only take one / But then he got bored he ended up taking all four") without offering any variation on the constrictive boy-meets-girl template. Finn is keen to reference important literary figures (Kerouac, Tennyson), which is fine, but on much of this evidence he's read introductions and nothing more.
That said, Boys and Girls in America will not shift units by the bucket-load on the strength of the words; it will sell because of Finn's terrific, slurred delivery, crashing power chords, nostalgic piano refrains and drums that sound as if stick man Bobby Drake is tooled-up with a pair of sledge hammers and a dustbin lid. This is 'classic' rock in every sense of the word, except that it isn't: it is imitation rock - cheap and cheerful but oh so shallow. The question remains: why listen to Boys and Girls when there is Born to Run? 44
1 comment:
There are some records though, that aren't original, they are just GOOD. Unequivocally good. And this is one of them. Yes, it does get a bit Springsteeny, but I'd rather the honest to goodness musicianship and lyricism on display here than The Killers' more pretentious monkey act. It doesn't do anything new, but it does it bloody well.
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