The Hold Steady
Bruce Springsteen once said that in order to play rock 'n' roll properly, you have to engage in a kind of doublethink: you have to able to hold in your head at the same time the idea that what you're doing is the most important thing anyone has ever done, and at the same time that it's just fun, it's just music, it's only rock 'n' roll. And something pretty similar applies to The Hold Steady as well. You can take the music and Craig Finn's words as just dashed off rants about the party scene over adrenaline-fuelled indie rock - which is fine, nothing at all wrong with that. And the music is joyous, celebratory, reflective, exciting, sad... all those things. But I personally would say that Finn is the best lyricist operating today.
The thing with the Hold Steady is that there is so much going on in the lyrics, and it can come spat out at you all so fast that you don't even notice it, it's a blur. And it's obvious that his immediate antecedents, word-wise, are Springsteen and the Beats. But I'd also tentatively add John Berryman to that list as well. What Craig Finn is incredible at doing is nailing something very heartfelt and melancholic in a few very well-chosen words that feel completely spontaneous. I mean, this section from "Stuck Between Stations" blows me away every time I hear it:
The Devil and John Berryman they took a walk together
And they ended up on Washington talking to the river
He said, "I surrounded myself with doctors and deep thinkers
But big heads and soft bodies make for lousy lovers."
There was that night that we thought that John Berryman could fly
But he didn't, so he died
She said, "you're pretty good with words, but words won't save your life"
And they didn't so he died.
And he was drunk and exhausted, but he was critically acclaimed and respected.
Incredible stuff. Craig Finn's lyrics aren't pretentious, they're not verbose or sixth-form or try-hard, he's not Colin Meloy or Glenn Richards or Nick Cave, they flow out of him freely. He returns to the same themes, the same places (Ybor City), the same characters (Holly, Charlemagne, Gideon) and even the same lines time and again over the course of albums. It's almost weirdly novelistic in that way; much like Berryman's Dream Songs, actually. I was talking to my friend Alasdair about the relationship between Berryman and Finn the other week, and we were discussing how his lyrics actually do something Berryman does a lot; they use a metrically stable, shorter line to "round off" the ideas or thoughts in the earlier, less stable lines. Berryman does this a lot, and you get it all the time in The Hold Steady, like in "Your Little Hoodrat Friend":
Your little hoodrat friend's been calling me again
And I can't stand all the things that she sticks into her skin
Like sharpened ballpoint pens and steel guitar strings
She says it hurts but it's worth it.
Sometimes he can just nail something, and he can use rhyme and assonance at will, like my two favourite lines from "Lord, I'm Discouraged", about a girl falling victim to drugs and the scene:
This guy from the North Side, he comes down to visit
His visits they only take five or six minutes.
That - to me - is an unbelievably good couplet. Rife with internal assonance ("guy/side/five", "visit/six/minutes"), it rhymes, it makes sense and does something very Craig Finn; it tells you all you need to know without actually telling you what's happening. Just a salient little detail ("five or six minutes") that tell you all you need to know. He does that a lot. It's fantastic. All his words are about disaffection, boredom, alienation, drugs, booze, sex, parties and religion. Catholicism looms very large ("How A Resurrection Really Feels", "Cattle And The Creeping Things", "Lord, I'm Discouraged", etc); and has there been a better retelling of the Fall than this?:
I guess I heard about original sin
I heard the dude blamed the chick, I heard the chick blamed the snake
And I heard they were naked when they got busted
I heard things ain't been the same since.
The Hold Steady are - or have the potential to be - a really truly generational band. The sense of loss, of wasted youth, hedonism, excitement, longing....the Hold Steady almost killed me.
The thing with the Hold Steady is that there is so much going on in the lyrics, and it can come spat out at you all so fast that you don't even notice it, it's a blur. And it's obvious that his immediate antecedents, word-wise, are Springsteen and the Beats. But I'd also tentatively add John Berryman to that list as well. What Craig Finn is incredible at doing is nailing something very heartfelt and melancholic in a few very well-chosen words that feel completely spontaneous. I mean, this section from "Stuck Between Stations" blows me away every time I hear it:
The Devil and John Berryman they took a walk together
And they ended up on Washington talking to the river
He said, "I surrounded myself with doctors and deep thinkers
But big heads and soft bodies make for lousy lovers."
There was that night that we thought that John Berryman could fly
But he didn't, so he died
She said, "you're pretty good with words, but words won't save your life"
And they didn't so he died.
And he was drunk and exhausted, but he was critically acclaimed and respected.
Incredible stuff. Craig Finn's lyrics aren't pretentious, they're not verbose or sixth-form or try-hard, he's not Colin Meloy or Glenn Richards or Nick Cave, they flow out of him freely. He returns to the same themes, the same places (Ybor City), the same characters (Holly, Charlemagne, Gideon) and even the same lines time and again over the course of albums. It's almost weirdly novelistic in that way; much like Berryman's Dream Songs, actually. I was talking to my friend Alasdair about the relationship between Berryman and Finn the other week, and we were discussing how his lyrics actually do something Berryman does a lot; they use a metrically stable, shorter line to "round off" the ideas or thoughts in the earlier, less stable lines. Berryman does this a lot, and you get it all the time in The Hold Steady, like in "Your Little Hoodrat Friend":
Your little hoodrat friend's been calling me again
And I can't stand all the things that she sticks into her skin
Like sharpened ballpoint pens and steel guitar strings
She says it hurts but it's worth it.
Sometimes he can just nail something, and he can use rhyme and assonance at will, like my two favourite lines from "Lord, I'm Discouraged", about a girl falling victim to drugs and the scene:
This guy from the North Side, he comes down to visit
His visits they only take five or six minutes.
That - to me - is an unbelievably good couplet. Rife with internal assonance ("guy/side/five", "visit/six/minutes"), it rhymes, it makes sense and does something very Craig Finn; it tells you all you need to know without actually telling you what's happening. Just a salient little detail ("five or six minutes") that tell you all you need to know. He does that a lot. It's fantastic. All his words are about disaffection, boredom, alienation, drugs, booze, sex, parties and religion. Catholicism looms very large ("How A Resurrection Really Feels", "Cattle And The Creeping Things", "Lord, I'm Discouraged", etc); and has there been a better retelling of the Fall than this?:
I guess I heard about original sin
I heard the dude blamed the chick, I heard the chick blamed the snake
And I heard they were naked when they got busted
I heard things ain't been the same since.
The Hold Steady are - or have the potential to be - a really truly generational band. The sense of loss, of wasted youth, hedonism, excitement, longing....the Hold Steady almost killed me.