The Hold Steady – Heaven is Whenever
Vagrant
Words: Angela Toomer
You know that feeling you get within the first twenty-or-so minutes of listening to an album when it hits you that this is a great album? Like when you heard the line from the Hold Steady’s second album Separation Sunday’s “Your Little Hoodrat Friend”? “He can’t stand all the things that she sticks into her skin/like sharpened ballpoint pins and steel guitar strings. She says it hurts, but it’s worth it.” Lines like this are precisely why frontman Craig Finn’s music is so compelling, the lines you don’t quite get at first listen, but suddenly hit you as completely genius the second or third time around. I’ve only seen two reactions to the Hold Steady: people are either confused and find Finn’s vocals too grating or fall head-over-heels in love with the band, doodling lyrics on the inside of their Biology notebooks. A critic favorite, the Hold Steady has expanded from a bar-band-like, more spoken, lyrically-dense sound, weaving storytelling and clever lines in and out of songs on Almost Killed Me and on their all-around best album Separation Sunday; to becoming a more musically layered band, more melodic with a “prettier” sound on albums like Boys and Girls in America. So where are the Hold Steady going with this next album? And, more importantly, will this album be scratched into all of its fan’s souls like the ones that came before it? (Hold Steady fans…get it?)
The first bluesy guitar riff is probably the first time we’ve heard anything heavily blues-influenced from the Hold Steady, and this sound makes it evident that the group is expanding their sound, combining genres in ways they haven’t before. Worries about keyboardist Franz Nicolay’s departure were all over Hold Steady message boards. The result is, predictably, a more guitar-centered sound, which guitarist Tad Kubler insists is “guitar heavy…but NOT heavy guitar.” It’s a little sad, though—guess we won’t hear any more accordion either.
Some things certainly haven’t changed: Finn still shouts about their Minneapolis-St. Paul roots throughout songs like “We Can Get Together” and “Sweet Part of the City.” Their songs still center around the feeling of wandering around these cities, looking for the next good party and the next good way to get high. He continues to conflate sex and religion with great lines like “St. Theresa told me we should rattle our bones” in “Our Whole Lives.” Finn is singing more, though, like in “Smidge,” and even most hardcore of Hold Steady fans can admit that he’s best when he’s speaking; storytelling is his greatest strength. I’m okay with this, though I didn’t think I would be when I heard the rumor. This album, partially because of Finn’s replacement of speaking with singing, will probably bring the band a wider spectrum of listeners. The band seems to have found the balance between keeping their songs interesting and avoiding predictability, while still reaching those elements out to more rock fans, maybe even making their music more listenable in the process. Tracks like “Hurricane J” and “Rock Problems” might even be at home on (dare I say it) the radio. This album might be another step (the first being the Hold Steady’s move from Frenchkiss Records to Vagrant in 2005) that moves them further out of relative obscurity into the mainstream.
The record is lyrically different from earlier albums. It’s not a concept album (Separation Sunday), but it’s not just an album full of great live crowd-pleasers (Boys and Girls in America). It has both of these elements. This record sees the Hold Steady become more overtly sentimental, as opposed to the slight cynicism and more subtle sentimentality shown through characters like Bar Rat Holly in Separation Sunday. Here, Craig Finn lays these heartbreaking statements in front of the audience. This is where the Hold Steady steps outside of their bar band rep. Heaven Is Whenever shows the Hold Steady as vulnerable with lines like “Utopia’s a band, they sang ‘Love Is the Answer,’ and I think they’re probably right, let it shine down on us all, let it warm us from within.” Finn again shows the Hold Steady to be romantic—but avoids excess sentimentality—when he drops what might be the Hold Steady’s thesis into “Slight Discomfort” (arguably the best song on the record): “Our struggle still feels wonderful tonight.” It picks up where Holly left off on Separation Sunday, somewhere between death and being born again, and tells us that it’s worth it.
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