Yet would it be uncharitable not to join in the general chorus of gee-wow that has rightly accompanied the release of The Hold Steady Almost Killed Me, the debut album by the Hold Steady, a band which features two Lifter Puller alumni and which sounds unsurprisingly like Lifter Puller. There are important differences: Lifter Puller loved their indie-hard-pop tropes but the Hold Steady favors Nugent-spattered rock dioramas; Lifter Puller nodded haltingly toward fuck-with-the-recipe experimental rock-album notions, inserting interludes here and minute-long songs there, while the Hold Steady proudly and haughtily relies on formulae — which, again, might sound sniffy (“formulaic” ought not be a pejorative: if it is, it’s only because the prog-loving inmates have taken over the God-damned asylum) but is meant lovingly, dotingly, bug-eyedly. Good formulae saved us all from the plague, and good formulae keep us in martinis to this day. The Hold Steady are onto something all their own. Yes; yes. They have got the goods. |