John Madden
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A quick note: I’ve been doing just album reviews lately, and I really wanted to do something on a live show. So what follows is a short, spontaneous and disjointed bit on The Hold Steady at The Academy, Dublin on May 13th. Sorry if it’s repetitive and/or incoherent…
Craig Finn is clearly delighted to be here. As he and the rest of the Hold Steady plug in their instruments he welcomes The Academy crowd to the first night of the tour and introduces his parents, somewhere down the back and over from Minneapolis, Minnesota to celebrate their fortieth wedding anniversary. In the thirty or so seconds it takes for him to get through this and into the opening bars of ‘Stuck Between Stations’, he’s practically giddy. It’s going to be a good night.
I’ve seen the Hold Steady before. I saw them support the Rolling Stones last summer, outdoors at Slane Castle with a freezing rain soaking everyone while they played on, oblivious as to whether anyone was listening and playing as if to a small but rapt audience instead of fifty thousand people killing time before Mick and Keith come out. I wondered back then what the hell it would be like to see them in a venue they can completely take over.
The Academy, an erstwhile nightclub/theatre/venue on Dublin’s Abbey Street is, all told, a pretty decent place to see a band like the Hold Steady. The room we’re in is tiny – it’s maybe a third the size of the open plan office I work in (population – about 80) and looks for all the world like fictional nightspot The Bronze from ‘Buffy The Vampire Slayer.’ If there’s anywhere in this city to see what has been described as ‘America’s Bar Band’, it’s here. Dinosaur Jr. played here the previous night. Black Rebel Motorcycle Club will play the next. Its rock credentials are in order.
Which is why The Hold Steady are so easily able to raise the roof here. The show has an almost religious fervor to it; bolstered by the sleeve-worn Springsteen influences (Springsteen shows have been referred to as ‘The Church of Bruce’) and the heavy Christian imagery in many of the songs. The crowd is not only screaming back the “whoa-oh-oh-oh” refrains on ‘Massive Nights’ but lines like “Damn right, He’ll rise again” from ‘Your Little Hoodrat Friend’. Finn clearly relishes the Frontman-as-Preacher role, injecting drama into the songs by acting out the conversations imagined therein with hand gestures, shrugs and exaggerated facial expressions. This is a spotlight and a pulpit.
The band plays songs from the first three albums – ‘Almost Killed Me’, ‘Seperation Sunday’ and ‘Boys and Girls in America’, as well as previewing a couple of tracks from the forthcoming ‘Stay Positive’. The overriding themes of debauchery, redemption, Catholicism, sex, drugs and rock and roll are all there. Or as my sister Caroline put it after the show, “They sure have a lot of songs about getting high.” The new songs sound pretty solid – at least a darker vision of what has come before. Regular characters Gideon, Charlemagne and Holly aka Hallelujah are at least referred to, and there are some lyrical and musical nods to previous albums.
Finn’s enthusiasm is as unshakeable as the crowd’s, and as the energy level rises so does the volume. By the end of it all he’s practically screaming lyrics in the microphone, and they’re being screamed back zealously.
After an hour and a half, Finn says his goodbyes and the band play traditional closer, ‘Killer Parties’, pausing between verses to give thanks to family, friends and the audience. “Minneapolis, Minnesota,” says Finn. “Brooklyn, New York. Dublin, Ireland. We’re all… The Hold Steady.”
Just a brief interlude between reviews to introduce you to The Kanyu Tree.
The Kanyu Tree are brothers Daniel, Shane and Oisin McCluskey, a boyband-handsome trio from Galway, Ireland who do jangly, melodic summery rock - imagine 'Surfin' USA ' era Beach Boys covering 'Out Of Time' era R.E.M. and you're probably not too far off the mark.
If you were at The Hold Steady in The Academy last night, you'll probably have seen these dudes supporting. They well and truly rocked the joint and deserve a wider audience. So, for your listening pleasure, here's their song 'Tanglewood'.
They're on MySpace and will be playing the Village in Dublin on May 28th, as well as a few other dates around the country.
‘Narrow Stairs’ is not an easy album to love. In fact, as soon as it was over, I had to listen to it again. And then again. Because I was afraid something had happened. I was afraid I was right. Quotes like this were floating around:
”Thus far it’s pretty weird, and pretty spectacular; lots of blood. It’s creepy and heavy… We’ve got a ten minute long Can [German experimental band – JM] jam.”
- Chris Walla on hallofjusticerecording.com
and:
“It's really weird. It's really, really good, I think, but it's totally a curve ball, and I think it's gonna be a really polarizing record.”
- Chris Walla to Billboard Magazine
and:
"I just don't feel like we really have anything to prove of it other than to ourselves and to making a record we really enjoy."
- Ben Gibbard on deathcabforcutie.com
This sort of thing scared the bejesus out of me. I didn’t want weird, or polarizing or creepy. I love Death Cab – I travelled to London during a period of unemployment (no easy feat) just to see them and am hoping beyond hope for a Dublin headline show this year. I wanted that special, easygoing pop-rock sound, the stuff that I’d heard on ‘Plans’ and ‘Transatlanticism’ (which is in my all-time Top 5) and ‘The Photo Album’ (which is actually better than ‘Transatlanticism’, all told, but I don’t love it as much.) To me, “I just don't feel like we really have anything to prove” sounded suspiciously like an excuse for some self-indulgence and navel-gazing. I’d heard the first single ‘I Will Possess Your Heart’ and the two new songs (‘Cath…’ and ‘Talking Bird’) that had appeared on ‘The Daytrotter Sessions’ and they’d only allayed my fears a little. But I don’t like to judge an album by it’s first single; or by a couple of alternate versions – who knows if they’re really representative of the whole thing? So I listened. And I listened again. And then I listened again. And by then, I was starting to like it.
That’s not to say that this isn’t a self-indulgent album on the part of Death Cab for Cutie. MOGgers have had the privilege of being able to keep up with Ben Gibbard’s listening habits over the past twenty months or so; and as such we can kind of see the influences. We’ve already mentioned the experimental Kraut-rock (in Chris Walla’s “10 minute Can jam) There’s evidence of Harry Nilsson – if we’re going to pick an overriding for the album it’s probably what the Beach Boys or the Dave Clarke Five would sound like covering ‘Without You’, such are the jingly melodies covering the bleak subject matter. Death Cab have for a long time been the Roe vs. Wade of Indie vs. Emo music, the former camp claiming them musically while the latter lyrically. ‘Narrow Stairs’ does nothing to quell the debate.
‘Bixby Canyon Bridge’ kicks right off with appropriately Kerouacian imagery (Gibbard took a well publicised sabbatical to Big Sur, and has frequently mentioned Jack Kerouac as a favourite author and influence), stream of consciousness lyrics emphasised with words that run between lines (‘Until I eventu/ally arrived’) and pronunciations are beaten and reformed (‘San Francisco’ becomes three syllables, but somehow all are pronounced) to fit the meter of the song. The California influence, the love-hate relationship with the state that seemed to begin on ‘The Photo Album’s’ ‘Why You’d Want To Live Here’ continues with ‘Grapevine Fires’, which appear to reference the wildfires of 2007 – there’s no love lost between Gibbard and the Golden State, but then again you can’t seem to tear him away from it. “I couldn't think of anywhere I would of rather been to watch it all burn away” he sings. ‘You Can Do Better Than Me’ and ‘Your New Twin Sized Bed’ are exercises in ducking and coping with perceived inevitable rejection – in both songs Gibbard seems to be singing to someone who he is terrified is just about to leave him – like he’s about ten minutes away from Gilbert O’Sullivan’s ‘Alone Again, Naturally.’
The standouts on the album are easy to spot. The opening riff to ‘Cath...’ is awesome, and the song itself, an ode to getting what you settle for, is as striking a song as they’ve ever written. Tribal drums keep ‘Pity And Fear’ away from the ordinary and you will be days trying to get ‘Long Division’ out of your head. Bassist Nick Harmer is given more emphasis and freedom to roam, and Gibbard’s voice is, at times isolated from the instrumental track; and the sound is richer for both of these.
Gibbard sums it up for me on the first single, ‘I Will Possess Your Heart’:
You gotta spend some time, love
you gotta spend some time with me.
And I know that you’ll find, love
I will possess your heart.
You gotta spend time with ‘Narrow Stairs’. But it’s worth it.
As always, here’s the Track Listing:
1. "Bixby Canyon Bridge"
2. "I Will Possess Your Heart"
3. "No Sunlight"
4. "Cath..."
5. "Talking Bird"
6. "You Can Do Better Than Me"
7. "Grapevine Fires"
8. "Your New Twin Sized Bed"
9. "Long Division"
10. "Pity and Fear"
11. "The Ice Is Getting Thinner"
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Comments
i was the opposite, i really wanted a 'weird', 'heavy' and 'polarizing' record. so i was very confused when i heard it, because to me it just sounds like another Plans. a variation on a theme. there's nothing terribly edgey or different. i really wonder why they made it out to be like that.
that's not to say i don't like it. i think it's a pretty good album. i was just expecting something completely different from what they'd said about it. i feel deceived! ah well, i do like it. especially Bixby Canyon Bridge. nice review!
I keep a notebook, and I write down thoughts about what I'm reviewing as I go along. There's one word I wrote at the very beginning of my listening to this:
'Evolution.'
I don't see a band suddenly going from one sound straight into another, nor can I imagine why fans of a band would want them to. I see where you're coming from - I don't think that it should be 'same again', either. But change has to be a natural progression, and I think that's what this is. At this rate you should actually get the heavy, strange and polarizing record you want.
Ironically, I think the most polarizing question about the album so far (at least from what I've read) is whether or not the album is polarizing.
Umm... that should read "At this rate you should actually get the heavy, strange and polarizing record you want in three albums time."