The Hold Steady, Boys And Girls In America, Vagrant, 2006

Us kids, we love our music. Though, very often that music has nothing to do with us kids. That doesn’t mean that it’s bad music, completely foreign or inaccessible, it’s just not all about the kids. Craig Finn, the Hold Steady’s lovably goofy frontman, borrows inspiration from his younger years, giving us some of the most relatable, observant and well-written rock n’ roll music of the decade.
Teenage angst, love, drugs and general partying are not new subjects in the wide genre of music known as rock, what is new is the Hold Steady’s approach to teenage angst, love, drugs and general partying; he enlists honesty and authenticity in a way that has us exclaiming “that is so true!” at least once per song, often four or five times. In Boys And Girls In America, the Hold’s third album, the songs get less specific but no less observant.
On the first two albums, Finn used the names of specific people and places quite often––especially on the second album, Separation Sunday, with closely follows three characters––making the songs slightly more alienating, yet his startling observations still rang true. The songs’ getting less specific make them even more relevant, which, in turn, makes it easier for the listener to situate himself squarely inside of the narratives. The “that is so true!” factor also increases.
In Boys And Girls’ epic opener, “Stuck Between Stations,” Finn heaves a line right out of Kerouac’s On The Road with his cry of how, on some nights, he thinks Sal Paradise was right when he said “boys and girls in America have such a sad time together.” He then dives even deeper into his uncanny knowledge of youth and lists, bullet point style, how boys and girls in America do, indeed, have such a sad time together: “Making sure their makeup’s straight/Crushing one another with colossal expectations/Dependent, undisciplined, and sleeping late.” How does he know all of this?
Each track on Boys And Girls features a story line revolving around a party, a girl, dating, or, in the case of “Chillout Tent” a pair of teens who go to a music festival, do too many drugs and find themselves hooking up in the paramedic tent. The song is sung with such straightforwardness and attention to detail that it’s as if Finn is sitting in the bar telling his buddies about something that happened last weekend, metaphors be damned.
Finn’s lyrics are beautiful in their directness and accessibility and the same can be said for how he sings them. His blunt half-singing/half-talking delivery works for what he is saying; anything closer to proper singing would ruin the effect. When the words are nearly spoken over music it becomes really, really easy to sing along, and with goose bump-inducingly poignant lines like “we kissed in your car and we drank from your purse” you will be singing along.
In fact, goose bump-inducing poignancy is one of the Hold Steady’s most powerful weapons, and one that Finn wields with outstanding authority and precision. Also the music, which by no means suffers by the commanding presence of the lyrics, is not a something to trifle with. The four other members of the band keep it all together with their timeless I-think-I’ve-heard-this-before guitar riffs and powerful drums. While Finn isn’t singing, his band is jamming behind him, launching solos and continuing their classic melodies.
Great music is that way because of its accessibility and subject matter that relates, somehow, to your own life. The Hold Steady must have written the book on this matter, or at least found a really good copy; any good band could write the lyric “I love this girl,” but only Craig Finn would think to add “but I can’t tell when she’s having a good time.” The second half of the line instantly catapults the entire song from a run-of-the-mill piece of rock music to a hyperaware explanation of how anyone who’s ever liked someone feels.
The Hold Steady appeal very much to both adults and kids because their subject matter is totally rooted in youth. While adults want desperately to remember the great times they had in their younger days, much like Finn must, us kids want to know that those experiences are just and that everyone has them, and we want to have those events occur in our own lives so that we could, someday, write descriptive, reminiscent songs about them ourselves.

-February 10th, 2007