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Happy Hold Steady Day!


Northern Wish

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The new album "Stay Positive" drops today across North America. I know myself and loads of people have web accessed versions, but get out and support these guys with your $12.99 (Best Buy).

You will be glad you did...... From NYMag:

If you know anything about the Hold Steady, the indie-rock hybrid with one foot in Minneapolis and one in Brooklyn, you know that many of their songs are about drugs and alcohol and partying as those things might be experienced by a practicing Catholic. And so you might expect me, when I show up at the Pencil Factory in Greenpoint, to find the front man, Craig Finn, finishing off sixteen shots of turpentine in nostalgic celebration of his favorite birthday, and Tad Kubler, the lead guitarist, doing lines in the bathroom. You might expect to find pimps beating up black-eyed whores while the whores dance and recite half-remembered lines from Revelation and pregnant chicks bullying me into smoking cigarettes with them.

In fact, I do find Kubler at the bar, but he’s drinking a mild greyhound. It isn’t quite the traditional cocktail hour, so he seems apologetic. “A lot has been made of our lifestyle,†he says preemptively, “but it’s blown a little out of proportion.â€

Finn comes straight from the airport wearing a new Twins cap and looking a bit defeated by an encounter with modern American air travel.

“How was your flight?†Kubler asks him.

Finn shrugs. “Fine once it left. Only an hour late.â€

Don’t confuse these guys with their characters.

Finn and Kubler are consummate professionals who have built their reputations on dissipation and debauchery. They started the Hold Steady to play the kind of rock and roll they loved at a time when a very different sound dominated the scene. Their music is loud, raucous, and fun, but the stories they tell ache of desperation and loneliness. Their broad anthems are about small-bit players. And their sound, which is hard to pin down, confused by some for indie punk and by others for arena rock, obscures the universality of their appeal.

Yay!

TST

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Some copies available from online retailers also feature 3 bonus tracks as with all of their previous releases, but this is the first album with the bonus tracks available on a North American release. Thankfully because the Aussie versions run about $30........

S

ps. M every time you post you make me jealous. Shit that would have been awesome!

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I'm glad I decided to stop listening to the pre-release about a month before it officially came out because I am loving this album all over again.

We are the theatre

They are the people - dressed up to be seated

Lookin' upwards and dreamin'

We're the projectors

We're hosting the screening

We're dust in the spotlights

We're just kinda floating

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It's the first record I've bought this year from a band I already liked that didn't have a noticeable drop-off in quality.(DBT, MMJ)

Really? MMJ? That album is rock solid and a naturally progression from Z I thought.

"It's one thing to start it with a positive jam and it's another thing to see it all through..." Check!

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