Favorite Record Review: The Hold Steady - Boys and Girls in America

"There are times when I think that Sal Paradise was right / Boys and girls in America, they have such a sad time together."

With that opening line, Craig Finn sets the stage for everything that is to follow on The Hold Steady's 2006 release Boys and Girls in America.   The Brooklyn-by-way-of-Minneapolis Finn plays narrator on the band's third release, backed by Bobby Drake on drums, Tad Kubler on lead guitar, Galen Polivka on bass, and Franz Nicolay on piano and keys.  Finn's stories follow a series of characters as they stumble out of the bars and around the streets, through blackouts and break-ups, before the buzz and after the come down,  drugged out, strung out and high; dealing, coping and moving on.  It's the coolest diary you wish you could write, but are glad you can't. 

Over 11 songs and 41 minutes of music, Finn provides counsel from behind the mic like over-educated bartender, pharmaceutical college school drop out, under-employed lawyer, and community college English professor all rolled into one.  Professor Finn references Jack Kerouac's alter-ego and poet John Berryman's suicide in "Stuck Between Stations", while sardonically remarking "'You're pretty good with words / But words won't save your life'" / And they didn't so he died."  "Chips Ahoy!" questions the intimacy of a relationship built around drug use and an uncanny gambling skill.  On "Hot Soft Light" Dr. Finn quips "it started recreational / and ended kind of medical", admitting that there are times "when it all comes on a little bit too bright".  "Same Kooks" cranks up the speed with Kubler's skills on full display, nicely slowing down to an almost Gospel like keyboard phrase, making us think there might actually be a baptismal cleansing of sorts in the much referenced Mississippi River. 

Lament over the inability to replicate the newness of first love builds and swells in "First Night" and an inner monologue during a kiss in "Citrus" slows things down to a contemplative change of pace.  "You Can Make Him Like You" gives consent to a girl to acknowledge her own self -worth and the ability to define an identity independent from a man.  Advice like "You don't have to deal with the dealers / Let your boyfriend deal with the dealers / It only gets inconvenient / When you wanna get high alone" typifies the depth of Finn's ability to craft sharp witted tales that capture a perspective not often as thoughtfully represented.  The brash and reckless qualities of adolescence are presented alongside the vulnerability and the insecurity that defines the mixture of contradictions that we all, as teens, live through.

Above all, the biting, literate insight elevates the songs on "Boys and Girls in America" beyond any type of stereotypical DIY punk anthems.  The playing is dirty without ever being sloppy.   Finn's speak-sing delivery is a talking blues for a post-punk age.  The morning after wisdom becomes an overarching morality through Craig Finn's blend of street corner psychiatry and light-handed religiosity.  In the end the ethos imparted is more than a blessing of a drugged blurred existence.  It is a recognition that the drugs and the drinking, the "massive nights" and the "crushing lows", all come to be transcended by time, distance, and self realization.  We grow, we learn, and we come to grips with ourselves and the life we've been dealt.   After all other attempts to obscure yourself fail, sober up, and let yourself come into focus - words alone won't save you.

Favorite Record Review: M. Ward - Hold Time

There are moments each of us carry, that linger on in our memory, long after the time at which they occurred has passed.  These memories replay on a revolving loop in the background of our daily lives;  sometimes being retold and remade, embellished or misremembered, but forever a constant reminder of our overarching narrative.  Played together, these memories are the way in which we see ourselves in the world - the events of our lives from the first person.

Matt Ward's collection of songs off of 2009's "Hold Time" provide the score for these personalized motion pictures.  His songs are familiar and comforting, reminiscent of something we know, but they seem to hover just beyond recall.   Ward's voice is lushly coarse and delivered with layers of genuine tenderness, coating his songs with a thick stroke of emotional residue.  He sounds as if he woke in the middle of the night to sing these songs just for us.   

The album opens with "For Beginners", but kicks off in earnest with "Never Had Nobody Like You" the first of two standout electric tracks; charged by a delicious fuzz, supporting vocals by the female pronoun of Ward's side project She & Him, actress Zooey Deschanel, and a decisive bass drum thump.  Covers of Buddy Holly's "Rave On" (also featuring Deschanel) and Don Gibson's "Oh Lonesome Me" (featuring Lucinda Williams) assemble new structures from old architecture and are decidedly original in approach and distinctive in sound.  "Fisher of Men", "To Save Me" and "Epistemology", the second up front electric track, have Ward weaving subtle religious references around jogging bass lines, uplifting choral parts, and aloof cool slide riffs.  A pair of unadorned acoustic tracks, "One Hundred Million Years" and "Blake's View" supply the philosophical mortar to fill the joints the religion he sings of cannot.  

Thoughtful track sequencing allows the album to ebb and flow like a canoe happily taken by the current of the river.  Overall the guitar playing, like Ward's voice, sounds almost lazy at first, but in actuality brims with shy confidence and great skill.  The instrumentation is purposefully applied and always seems to enhance rather than detract from the core of the songs. 

On the title track Ward sings, "You were beyond comprehension tonight, but I understood, now if I could only, hold time....hold time....hold time".  With this album, M. Ward seeks to do the impossible: both pause the moment while present in it to keep it from ending, and physically grasp time as a means of understanding and contextualizing our story within the larger storyline.  While even M. Ward can't keep time from passing, he does manage to be the cinema to let our moments replay.