I Can’t Review the New Hold Steady Album

Why, you’re wondering, can’t I review Heaven is Whenever, the new album by the Hold Steady? After all, they are my favorite band. It would seem to be a natural fit: they put out an album and I tell you all about how wonderful it is.

But that’s exactly the problem. I’m not going to pretend that Bollocks! is ever (or has ever been) even remotely objective, but at this point me reviewing a Hold Steady album is like an alcoholic reviewing beer. Except the Hold Steady won’t fuck up my liver.

So there’s no point in me telling you that Heaven is Whenever, despite the departure of Franz Nicolay, is probably the best Hold Steady album yet (someone on the interwub claimed that Separation Sunday was the Hold Steady’s “peak” but that’s probably the drugs talking. The best Hold Steady album seems to always be the latest one, which is really an achievement. Almost Killed Me is a great record, and they’ve only gotten better since then. I keep waiting for the Hold Steady record that’s going to disappoint me and they keep not making it). Of course I think that. At this point, it’s in my blood to think that.

If you’ve read Bollocks! much at all over the last two years, you probably expect me to say that Craig Finn’s lyrics are sharper than ever (standout lines include, “You can’t tell people what they wanna hear/ if you also wanna tell the truth”; “Heaven is whenever/ we can get together/ lock the door to your room/ and listen to your records”; and the simple, probably true, “In the end/ I bet no one learns a lesson”) and that Tad Kubler is still the most underrated guitar player in the world (opener “Sweet Part of the City” even features slide guitar and it sounds sweeter than honey dripping from the vulvas of angels*) .

So maybe you should find another reviewer to give you the nitpicky stuff. Someone will try to accuse the Hold Steady of making the same album over and over (which they haven’t) and someone else will say Craig Finn can’t sing (he’s gotten a lot better since Almost Killed Me and Heaven is Whenever is his strongest vocal performance yet). Pitchfork thinks “these new songs just don’t hit as hard,” so you can go there and try to figure out what about Heaven is Whenever warrants a score of 6.2. (Parenthetical rant:  I’ve got serious beef with scoring systems in general. If someone can’t tell how you feel about a record by what you wrote, you did a shitty job of writing. Almost every website rates things with numbers, stars, or grades like “A-”, which is bad. But Pitchfork’s numbered rating system is by far the most pretentious, goofiest bullshit ever. What the fuck are they judging, figure skating? Did the Hold Steady not land their Salchows and Lutzes to your liking? I suggest a new motto for you, Pitchfork: “No One Skates a Clean Program. Except Radiohead”) Perhaps Pitchfork didn’t notice the additional (and quite welcome) harmony vocals on nearly every track or the fact that Heaven is Whenever is heavy on chord-based riffs but not as heavy on Kubler’s guitar pyrotechnics (though those do make some appearances as well) .

You know who you should read? Probably that Robert Christgau guy. He’s a real intellectual about this shit and he’ll probably give you some good copy on Heaven is Whenever. He’ll probably tell you all about what’s wrong with it, from start to finish. But I won’t. Because I love it. Would I sit here and tell you all the bad stuff (which is far outweighed by the skull-crackingly awesome stuff) about my fiancee? No. Because I love her and I’m going to marry her and if things don’t work out, I just might marry Heaven is Whenever.

On the bright side, Heaven is Whenever has done some brilliant housekeeping for me here at the imaginary Bollocks! office. I no longer feel compelled to compile a list of my favorite albums of 2010 this December. Heaven is Whenever is my favorite album of the year – I listened to it six times the day it started streaming on NPR’s website and at least twice a day since then. That was before the fucking album even came out! Now that it’s out, there’s not gonna be a lot of time for me to listen to other albums in my car. I might as well roll out a little red carpet that leads to my CD player and forget that my other albums even exist.

So does this make me a Hold Steady fanboy? Possibly. Hell, probably. But I’m not gonna run to your blog and tell you to kill yourself if you don’t like Heaven is Whenever (this happened to me once when I had the temerity to not like an album. I won’t say which album, but the band’s name rhymes with Shmortugal. The Pan). Whether or not you like this album is immaterial to the fact that to my refined, devilishly handsome ears, this album kicks several buckets of ass.

So what is it, you might be inclined to ask, that makes me like the Hold Steady so damn much? Glad you asked. They consistently scratch an itch that I have for fun (listen to “Rock Problems” and “Our Whole Lives” and tell me those aren’t fun songs), literate rock ‘n’ roll music. Craig Finn’s musings on death and religion are not that far from my own – I believe, as he has mentioned before, that we are our only saviors. In a godless universe, we have two powerful things to help us out: each other and rock ‘n’ roll. It’s not Nietzsche, but it’s not the worst ethos in the world either. But more than that, the Hold Steady has taken the music I grew up hating (I call it Alcoholic Stepdad Music, which should let you know everything you need to about where I’m coming from), music I thought was for dead-end buffoons in dead-end towns, and they’ve spit it back to me as something uplifting, positive, and goddamn entertaining. “Beautiful” is not a word that a lot of people would use to describe the Hold Steady’s music, but it’s beautiful to me.

So no pretense here. In an era of completely bullshit objectivity, I came here to praise Heaven is Whenever. There is nothing I don’t like about this album and if that ruins whatever credibility you were lending me, I can live with that (what the hell were you doing lending credibility to a blog anyway?). Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve only listened to Heaven is Whenever once today and that’s not nearly enough.

*If you’re unsure as to exactly how sweet that is, why not ask your reverend when you’re at church next Sunday?

Romance is Boring

Well, let’s see if the soft spot in my heart for Los Campesinos! (the Welsh band with the Spanish name) has grown any since they dominated my 2008 with not one but two totally awesome albums.

Nope.

The soft spot is about the same size that it used to be, which is still reasonably large-ish. The new Los Campesinos! record, Romance is Boring (I disagree with the assertion, but that’s a great title nonetheless), is probably my first big Expectations Test of 2010 (it will be followed shortly by second albums from both She & Him and Titus Andronicus). Their first album, Hold On Now, Youngster, made me pretty giddy, with its acerbic lyrics and bouncy, twee-pop music (I personally wouldn’t call it that, but a friend of mine used it to deride the band not long ago and I’m stealing his words because I confess I’ve never known what people meant by “twee”. My friend went on to compare Los Campesinos! to the Go! Team [on exclamation points alone, he's got a point] in a way that suggests he has about as much regard for both bands as he would have for a grilled shit sandwich with a side order of deep-fried herpes). Of course, it caught me in the early part of 2008, when I was feeling like I didn’t have much besides a Hold Steady album (Stay Positive, which turned out to be the best album of that year) to look forward to.

So what, exactly, is the trouble here? Romance is Boring isn’t bad. It’s certainly not boring. It’s got the clever lyrics (so far, my favorite is “we need more post-coital/ and less post-rock”, a sentiment with which I heartily concur, “post-rock” being right up there with “twee” on the list of Bullshit Styles that I Think Pitchfork Made Up), the music is actually better (more guitars, fewer chimey bits) than in the past. And yet…

And yet…

Well, I’m kinda stunned that I don’t like this album more than I do. And don’t get me wrong (or do), I do like it. It’s just… hmm… Here: have you ever had a friend talk up a favorite dessert or something – say, tiramisu – and they take you to this place where they think the world’s best ever, you’d-kill-your-mom-for-a-slice, perfect tiramisu is made and you try the tiramisu and it’s got all the essential elements (for you non-culinary types, any good tiramisu has, in my estimation, two essential elements: coffee and rum), but it just doesn’t quite deliver for you the transcendent, orgasmo-religious (how’s that for a made-up word, Pitchfork? I can do this shit too) experience that it clearly does for your friend? Well, replace your friend with “me”, yourself with “also me” and the tiramisu with Romance is Boring. I think I’ve reached a point where I no longer believe my own rhapsodizing about how fucking awesome Los Campesinos! are. This probably won’t create a problem for other listeners of their music, but it’s kinda bumming me out.

To prove that I was still inexplicably ga-ga over Los Campesinos!, I revisited their debut. Hold On Now, Youngster is still awesome, but I’m now skeptical that I would list it among my favorite albums of 2008. It’s still good, but it doesn’t grab me the way it used to. Fearing the onset of some kind of complete desensitization to great music, I decided to test myself on another band, Titus Andronicus. I was pretty awestruck by their debut, The Airing of Grievances. In anticipation of their second album, The Monitor (which is coming out next month and which can’t come out soon enough for me), I listened to Grievances again. Funny thing: I probably love The Airing of Grievances more now than I ever have. It’s a great album, still one of the more cathartic records I’ve ever heard (when you feel like beating the shit out of the whole world, put on “Joset of Nazareth’s Blues” and “Titus Andronicus” and you’ll feel better in no time. Or at least you’ll have an invigorating soundtrack for that steep climb up the book depository stairs).

So what’s changed between me and Los Campesinos!? Was I so eager for Romance is Boring that I ruined it with my own admittedly high expectations? No. I think it is exactly as good as I expected it to be. Los Campesinos! are doing what they do best, and they’re doing it pretty well. I think I’m just less excited by what they do best than I used to be. Now, bear in mind that I’ve only had this album for a couple of weeks and I could be orgasming over it by year’s end, but I don’t feel that way now. I felt sort of obligated to listen to Romance is Boring and that’s never a good sign. Having fulfilled the obligation, I don’t regret anything, but I do feel like I was just going through the motions a little (yes, I realize I’m dangerously close to a “faking it” analogy). 2010 is a weird year so far – there’s stuff I’ve been sure I would hate that has blown my mind and stuff I’ve expected to blow my mind that has been… well, so far, merely adequate. That I haven’t been utterly disappointed by anything yet is actually a rare and encouraging sign.

At the end of the day, I think the problem I have with Romance is Boring is that I expected it to blow my mind and it didn’t. It was merely good, possibly even great (maybe. Nah, probably not), but entirely unsurprising. I’m not gonna sell the album back or anything and I’ll probably keep listening to it, but I feel like I might end up feeling like I’m in love with an image of this album that exists only in my mind. In which case, I guess I will have proven that my romance with Los Campesinos! has become boring, at which point I will wait until they are dying of cancer to cheat on them. (Too soon?)