Pages tagged “The Hold Steady”

We've just released our collective Top 50 at Paste, and there's been the usual response both on our site and others' about what you think we missed, what we got wrong and what the list really should have looked like. Since this was a collaborative effort with votes from staff and some of our regular critics, everyone would have made this list a little differently, including me. Here's my personal top 10 (i.e. the actual 10 best albums this year).

1. Bon Iver—For Emma, Forever Ago
Some albums stampede their way into your brain, others creep in during the middle of the night and lay claim to some hidden corner forever. Justin Vernon's debut is one of the sneakiest albums since Sam Beam whispered his way into my cerebral cortex in 2002.

Check out Paste's top 50 albums of 2008...

[Edit: Congratulations to our winner! Stay tuned to Paste:Local for more great ticket giveaways!]

When listening to a song and I instantly visualize myself at the concert, pushing through to the front of the crowd, beer in one hand, the other arm vigorously pumping in the air, while screaming the lyrics at the top of my lungs...this song gets added to my  Fist-Pump Anthem playlist. I like my fist-pumpers southern-fried, heavy on the guitar, and smothered in awesome. Here are some of the best fist-pumpers I’ve heard in 08 ... so far:



Please chime in with your favorite fist-pump anthems, as I’m always looking for another reason to dislocate a shoulder.

The Hold Steady’s frontman Craig Finn has shifted from political commentary to sports announcement. The Minnesota native and baseball enthusiast plans to hold an hour-long chat online next Wednesday with ESPN.com, where he’ll field questions on everything from his band’s new album, Stay Positive, to his take on Twin City sports.

In case you missed it, on July 15 The Hold Steady released one of the most critically acclaimed albums of the summer, Stay Positive. On Sept. 29, the Brooklyn rock outfit will start taking over Europe on its month-long tour of the continent. On Oct. 30, the band returns stateside and tours across North America until the end of November.

Every band has its own dynamic. Sonic Youth, DBT and Dinosaur Jr are all very different bands internally. Some are more democratic than others, and with that, dealing with each band and individual member is a case by case scenario. The same holds true with The Hold Steady. In terms of songwriting, both Tad and Franz are strong songwriters in their own way.

At this point in their careers, the members of The Hold Steady have become more or less synonymous with boozing and fist pumping, which is a feat most of us (Andrew W.K. excluded) can only dream of accomplishing someday.

(Getting sick, sick, sick with Chk, Chk, Chk)

As the natural progression of emergently original things go, Pfork’s festival speaks no more to one niche market, which is something best analogized by !!!’s Nic Offer late afternoon Saturday, before thrusting his pelvis to a series of genre-blurring grunts:

We’re the lowest rated band on Pitchfork, with the highest set time.  It goes to show you the kids know something the critics don’t.

[Above, L-R: Bobby Drake and John Agnello]

Things are really rolling. We’ve been tracking furiously and the band is really hitting their stride. We’ve nailed easier songs like “Stay Positive” and harder ones like “Creepy Jam,” which will end up being called “One For The Cutters.” That song became one of my favorites early on. We cut it live with Franz playing the intros and verses with a synth harpsichord simulation. We knew we needed a real harpsichord on the song, but we had to find one that was accessible. But that would be for another day.

One of America’s best bands kicks out a new batch of positive jams

Craig Finn just might be the most self-aware frontman in rock ’n’ roll. “Our songs are sing-along songs,” he declares on Stay Positive’s opener “Constructive Summer,” and a couple verses later he shows instead of tells. “Me and my friends are like,” begins the line, before Finn is joined by backing vocals for “double whiskey, coke, no ice.” It’s a moment that begs for a full room’s worth of shouting as uniting as “LEONARD BERNSTEIN!” during that R.E.M. song about the end of the world. Finn intuitively knows this, tossing off lines just like it throughout Stay Positive—it’s yet another reason The Hold Steady is one of the best bands in America.

I just finished posting the 12 best concerts I've ever seen. Rather than have them all in 12 separate posts, I thought I'd consolidate the list here. I was recently digging through a pile of ticket stubs I've saved, finding cool concert after cool concert, from high school, college and especially, these last six years since we started Paste magazine. There are some big omissions—I've still never seen Springsteen or The Stones. I've only in the last few years checked off Dylan and Prince (neither made the list and only Prince was close). Some of the best concerts I picked are obvious choices. Others are more offbeat or just personal. But all are seared into my memory; for each night, I stood (or occasionally sat) in awe of the performance that was given. So here are the 12 best concerts I've seen:

#10
The Hold Steady
Oct. 25, 2007, The 40 Watt (Athens, Ga.)
Craig Finn really isn't even a singer in the proper sense. He kind of half-drunkenly shouts out stories, and the effect live is like he's talking to the audience all night. There's a shallowness to much of the subject matter—ingesting chemicals and hooking up—but he's still so damn insightful and interesting. He's a little goofy and infectiously happy. And so is the music, sloppy bar rock with big '70s muscular hooks. If you look around the room, everybody has big ol' grins on their faces, including guitarist Tad Kubler and the wonderfully mustachioed keyboardist Franz Nicolay. This was my second time seeing them, but it was part of a road trip to Athens with friends, which makes any show a little better. Plus they played almost every song off Boys and Girls in America, including my favorite, "Stuck Between Stations":

Those of you jonesing for some bar-rocking Americana only need to wait a little bit longer, because The Hold Steady is about to open up the party pit. In preparation for the upcoming release of their fourth LP Stay Positive (which is already available in full on the band's MySpace) Craig Finn and Co. recently announced that the album will be available exclusively on iTunes beginning June 17, nearly a full month before the brick-and-mortar release.

Vote in PasteMagazine.com's latest poll...

Worried the coming months won't contain enough massive nights? Dismayed you may never know how a resurrection really feels? Well, Craig Finn and his band of bar-barons The Hold Steady are now streaming their entire new album, Stay Positive, via MySpace to put you on the fast track to a constructive summer.

It was a busy week at Paste. Several Paste staffers returned from Sasquatch, we welcomed Ben Sollee by the office for a performance, celebrated two upcoming arrivals into the Paste family with a double shower, said hello to a brand new crop of interns, and oh yeah, I started a blog. Here's a little round-up of what was going on at PasteMagazine.com this week:

Rainn Wilson video from Sasquatch
Rainn Wilson goes toe-to-toe (at least that's how I hope it was) with our own Jason Killingsworth, complaining that his favorite band The National has gotten all uppity since their album landed #1 on Paste's Best of 2007 list.

New CD Releases
Reviews of new album from Fleet Foxes, Sam Phillips and Martha Wainwright.

Film of the week - Kung Fu Panda
Continuing my kids' theme this week, I took my young 'uns to a screening of Kung Fu Panda. Read the review here.

The Hold Steady Production Diary
In the lead up to one of our most anticipated albums of the year, Hold Steady producer John Agnello (Sonic Youth, Dinosaur Jr., Jay Farrar) shares with us the making of Stay Positive.

Day 2 in Philadelphia near the campus of the University of Pennsylvania saw Music Directors, Program Directors and record label reps, radio promoters (the guys that cajole, plead and otherwise beg the radio stations to play the latest "single" by their clients) checking out new and upcoming artists like Astrid Williamson and Ingrid Michaelson, as well as Ryan Bingham and Hayes Carll (a former Paste 4 To Watch artist).  But let's tell the story of the stellar evening showcase featuring Englishman Newton Faulkner and his red dreadlocks, new mommy Ani DiFranco, Paste cover kids The Hold Steady and New Orleans legend Dr. John in pictures....

As you might have read already, there's a new Hold Steady song out on the internet today. It's from their new album, Stay Positive, which won't be released until July 15th. Totally exciting, right? Sure, but only if you're not me and you lack the totally unreasonable expectations I have for, like, everything.

Former Paste cover fellas The Hold Steady have been squirreled away for the better part of 2008 working on both their beards and their fourth full-length, Stay Positive, which will be swishing through the city centers starting July 15. But any fan of the band knows that these boys were born to run—and born to rock face in towns across the world. The onslaught of awesome begins today with the release of "Sequestered in Memphis," the first single from Stay Positive, the beginning of ticket sales for the just-announced summer U.S. tour and producer John Agnello's first blog post for Paste about Stay Positive's recording process.

Brooklyn-via-Minneapolis rockers The Hold Steady have announced the street date of their fourth full-length album: Stay Positive is set for release on July 15 in the US and July 14 in the UK.

Written on the road and recorded in New York and New Jersey, the 11 new tracks feature "more dynamics, different instrumentation, more complex arrangements, and not always hiding behind raw volume," lead singer Craig Finn said in a statement. That "different instrumentation" includes doses of banjo, talk box and harpsichord, undoubtedly in addition to the band’s long-beloved sonic combination of accordion, guitars and beer.

As befits the name, Finn seems positively giddy about the new album. "Possibly the most exciting aspect of our band is the community of fans that have followed us around the country," he said in the statement. "In talking to them, we have found that no matter their ages, they are so much like us as people, that they seem at times an extension of the music. A great American philosopher named D. Boon once said 'Our band could be your life.' I think that is true. But 'Your Life could be Our Band' is also a true statement. I know this because we have lived it. These are our lives. These are your lives."

And this is the Stay Positive track list:

1. "Constructive Summer"
2. "Sequestered in Memphis"
3. "One for the Cutters"
4. "Navy Sheets"
5. "Lord, I’m Discouraged"
6. "Yeah Sapphire"
7. "Both Crosses"
8. "Stay Positive"
9. "Magazines"
10. "Joke About Jamaica"
11. "Slapped Actress"

This time last year, The Hold Steady was holding court on the cover of our Summer Festival Preview issue, still riding the woozy wave of its third LP, Boys and Girls in America, which clocked in at #2 on our list of Top 100 Albums of 2006. The band played over 200 live dates for that album, and the guys will hit the road again for the new release. Summer tour stops include:

May
2 - New York, N.Y. @ Webster Hall (Tribeca Film Fest)
7 - Middletown, Conn. @ Andrus Field (Wesleyan University)

June
8 - Chula Vista, Calif. @ 94/9 Independence Jam
27 - Baltimore, Md. @ Ram's Head Live!
28 - Philadelphia, Penn. @ Festival Pier - The Paul Green School of Rock Music Festival (with Devo)
29 - Brooklyn, N.Y. @ McCarren Pool

July
19 - Chicago, Ill. @ Pitchfork Festival
26 - Seattle, Wash. @ Capitol Hill Block Party

Related links:
Feature: We’re An American Band: The Hold Steady Holds Steady
Review: The Hold Steady - Boys and Girls in America
TheHoldSteady.com

Got news tips for Paste? E-mail news@pastemagazine.com.

Less than a month after the announcement of the flicks lined up for this year's Tribeca Film Festival comes word that some of Paste's favorite bands will provide massive nights (and afternoons) alongside the cinematic days of April 23-May 4.

The Tribeca/ASCAP Music Lounge, open to Festival badge holders, will host Nick Lowe, Regina Spektor, Ingrid Michaelson, Chris Thile (Nickel Creek), Sondre Lerche, Joseph Arthur, and other singer/songwriter-y types during the daylight hours of April 29-May 2, while Alexandra Patsavas (the Grammy-nominated music supervisor responsible for the awesomeness in the background of The O.C., Grey's Anatomy and Gossip Girl) curates a one-nighter showcase on May 2 called Breaking the Band sponsored by Target. The Hold Steady (who recently wrapped up LP #4), The Virgins and Republic Tigers will break all over Webster Hall—tickets for this open-to-the-public showcase will go on sale on April 12 at the Tribeca Film Festival site.

In addition to the Music Lounge and Breaking the Band, there are numerous musical films on the