B-Mac
So, did The Hold Steady own Jake's Nightclub on Saturday night? Of course they did. The Hold Steady are one of the great rock bands of this decade, and if you claim to love what Reverend Lovejoy calls the "rock and/or roll," you owe it to yourself to check them out.
Fortunately, if you missed them this time, you'll probably get another chance: The Hold Steady clearly like Bloomington. Before the show at Jake's, they played The Bluebird with Drive-By Truckers as recently as last November, and frontman Craig Finn told the crowd Saturday that the band had played Bloomington seven times in the course of its existence. AND they have a new song called "One For The Cutters"...
But I'm getting ahead of myself. For this bit of the tour, The Hold Steady's opener was a group from Philadelphia called The War On Drugs; and, while they could have been chosen for the ironic value of their name alone, they turned out to be a solid compliment to The Hold Steady. Rolling Stone has compared The War On Drugs' studio work to Bob Dylan meets Sonic Youth due to their use of amplifier feedback and the nasal pitch of singer Adam Granduciel's voice -- but live, with the group stripped down to a threesome, the fuzz was cut back and the Americana came out to the forefront. Either way, they sound to me like a more grounded version of The Walkmen (which I like).
But give them a listen and see what you think:
The War On Drugs - Taking The Farm
(MP3 courtesy of Secretly Canadian Records.)
As The War On Drugs' set ended, people flooded into the room until the entire space from the stage to the back doors was a sea of heads. (This, by the way, is my main excuse for the cruddiness of the photos you'll see here. I'm short and I had to stick to my strategic high ground, otherwise you'd be looking at pics of the hair on the backs of people's necks. Sorry! Click on them to get a better look.)
To my surprise, The Hold Steady opted to kick things off with the slow burn of "Positive Jam" -- the very first track off their debut album, 2004's Almost Killed Me -- before transitioning seamlessly into the call-and-response bounce of "Magazines" from 2008's Stay Positive. Maybe they just thought the two sounded good together but, in retrospect, it seems like foreshadowing for the night ahead: the night's setlist would range wildly across their discography, with at least a couple of songs from each of their studio albums. Even some rarities made the list: "Two Handed Handshake" from the bonus-tracks version of Stay Positive and "Milkshake Mosh," which was the first single by the band and is currently only available on the Australian import version of Almost Killed Me.
However, as much as the audience appeared to enjoy the opening with "Positive Jam" and "Magazines," it was the third song that tossed gasoline on the fire. That was "Chips Ahoy," one of the killer anthems from 2006's Boys And Girls In America. You can see the effect in the picture at the top of this post: a forest of hands flew up, mass pogoing ensued, an explosion of voices joined Finn in asking that question for the ages: "How am I supposed to know that you're high if you won't let me touch you?"
From that point on, the crowd surged and fell at the band's command. Having seen The Hold Steady twice before, I wasn't surprised by the pumped fists and singing that accompanied crowd-pleasers like "Your Little Hoodrat Friend," "Massive Nights" or "Stay Positive." But as I watched from my raised vantage point, I was amazed by the reaction to the songs that don't have big, easy sing-along choruses about love or drinking or rock or getting high -- songs like "Milkcrate Mosh" and "Hornets! Hornets!" Even at the back of the room, there was no chatting, there was no collective migration to the bar to get more drinks. Hundreds of faces were fixed in rapt attention for these songs' stories about the lives, loves and losses of skater punks, drug dealers and hoodrat chicks. It was downright eerie.
By the time The Hold Steady had reached the nominal ending of their set, it was obvious that they were pocketing some major tunes for the encore. However, I was still taken aback when they returned with the beautiful, slow-dance of "First Night" and followed its concluding surge of drums and guitars into the stadium-thunder of "Stuck Between Stations." Perhaps satisfied that Jake's roof had been sufficiently blown off its supports, Finn declared that things were "looking very good" and advised the crowd that they still had a couple of hours left in which to drink. "There is so much joy in what we do," he said, thanking the audience. Then The Hold Steady wrapped the night up with Almost Killed Me's final track, "Killer Parties," which closes with "If she says we partied/ then I'm pretty sure we partied. / I really don't remember. / I remember we departed from our bodies / We woke up in Ybor City..." Many of the dazed audience members who spilled out onto the sidewalk in front of Jake's looked like they were still there.
A little bonus for making it to the end of this post:
Did you know that there's an online archive of The Hold Steady's live shows (run by fans with the band's blessing)? And did you know that, among the recordings posted there is last November's show at the Bluebird? Whether you were there or just wondering what the fuss is about, here ya go:
The Hold Steady - Live @ The Bluebird, Bloomington, IN (Nov. 13, 2008)
