The Hold Steady - 'Boys And Girls In America' (Vagrant) Released 15/01/07

‘On The Road’s protagonist Sal Paradise’s assertion that “Boys and girls in America/Have such a sad time together”, set out on the first line of the record’s first track, is the obvious catalyst for this album. It spends its forty minutes imploring us onto a path where instead of wallowing in the suffocating pessimistic malaise that surrounds us, we should be getting high and wasted, every night if possible, forgetting about things like careers and responsibilities and simply celebrating life. The anti-Emo, if you like. An irresponsible, sweetly idealistic message then, but one that’s hard to resist when accompanied by the sort of fist-pumping irony-free urgency that only the Americans can pull off quite this well.

The Hold Steady are a band indelibly stamped through by the vast country that still holds a stranglehold, for better or worse, on our cultural lives this side of the Atlantic. In fact the likes of Razorlight and even The Killers, with their self-consciously widescreen anthems, would die for this Brooklyn-based, Minneapolis-bred five-piece’s masculine, bar-room blue-collar authenticity.

If all the Bruce Springsteen, Thin Lizzy (‘Hot Soft Light’ is a ‘Boys Are Back In Town’ for the 21st century) and Husker Du references paint the picture of a dependable alternative arena band to fill an (eek!) Counting Crows-shaped hole, what really lifts The Hold Steady into a band greater than they really should be are Craig Finn’s lyrics. Gamblers, alcoholics, druggies and relationships are scattered across narratives of rare clarity and fine analogies about how to kick back and enjoy life; articulations of everything the album set out to do in the first place. So the communal piano-punk of ‘You Can Make Him Like You’ is a warning against getting too comfortable, but wrapped up in nuggets of self-assertion building advice like “If you get tired of the music he likes/There’s always other boys”, while acoustic high-light ‘Citrus’ is actually quite squalid beneath it’s pretty exterior. “Hey citrus/Hey liquor/I love it when we come together” sighs Craig, before the killer pay-off line “I’ve had kisses that make Judas seem sincere”.

Big, clever and emotional, The Hold Steady see hope for us all, albeit hope in the bottoms of empty beer bottles. Remember the response of Liam Gallagher to 9/11: “Make mine a triple!” ‘Boys And Girls In America’ is that sentiment set to music, and it’s brilliant.