File Under: Bruce Springsteen meets the Replacement and a drinking habit
If You Like: Spoon, Guided By Voices
Label: Vagrant
After “Separation Sunday”, the band decided to ditch the convoluted story arcs on the new album, and explore more universal themes. Neil Finn still struggles to reconcile his Catholicism with a pretty hefty drinking habit and a lifetime on the fringes of the counterculture. When he sings, “Gonna walk around a drink some more,” it sounds like a threat. Or a lament.
Any album which starts with a Jack Kerouac quote, “boys and girls in America have such a sad time together,” sounds like it will be a complete downer. It’s not. It careens back and forth from melancholy to a rip roaring good time. It really is an album for the bipolar. The whole album can be summed up by the two strangers who wake in the same medical tent after their overdoses and kiss each other with the IV’s still in their arms: “It was sexy but it was sort of creepy.” The characters throw themselves into life without regard to the consequences. The Hold Steady show the joy of the life, as well as that vicious hangover in the morning. Or ten years later.
You can see why I like it so much.
THE VIDEO: "Chips Ahoy!" See the nerdiest-looking band in the world.
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