I can’t decide whether this overattention to the potential audience’s imagined reception is a necessary evil (since most critics, while they’re sketching out the one or two sentences that’ll serve as backstory in a review, take press kits at face value: which sad fact is enough to drive a man to strong drink) or just a consequence of Craig having moved to Williamsburg. I do think rather too much is made of “ironic appreciation”; I’m of the opinion that people who affect ironic postures are just trying real hard not to look overenthusiastic, since the betting line on overenthusiastic people ever getting laid is 8-1 against and getting worse all the time, and that sooner or later all ironic appreciators become genuine enthusiasts over the same things they were pretending to be ironic about. In the end none of this business will make any difference at all. Because the answer to the question about what the Hold Steady’s excellence means in light of everybody lately coming to the Craig-Finn-Is-Our-Own-Yeats party is this: it means that now that everybody’s finally here, we can really start to party in earnest. |