The Hold Steady - Separation Sunday
Angel-headed hipsters of the underground voted Separation Sunday (Frenchkiss Records) among the best albums of 2005, and with another album due out later this year, The Hold Steady is the band to keep your eye on in 2006. Ubiquitously labeled a bar band, The Hold Steady uses skulking guitar riffs and flagellating drum beats before driving its message home with hymnal-inspired keyboards. Shouted over the anthemic rock are all the usual themes that accompany the search for fulfillment: sex, drugs, and rock’n’roll, amidst a myriad of religious imagery and American cities. If the Beat Generation reincarnated into a rock band, they would be called The Hold Steady.
Separation Sunday is the parable of Hallelujah (Holly, for short), a hoodrat that stumbles into church to tell the “congregation how a resurrection really feels” (“How a Resurrection Really Feels”). Her testimony is that of a girl who skips CCD to buy drugs and looks for love in sex. She gets involved with skaters and scenesters whom she thinks can save her, but she ultimately ends up “completely alone” (“Banging Camp”). She is constantly on the run—leaving Massachusetts to get “high … by the banks of the Mississippi” (“Stevie Nix”), getting laid in Denver, “hoping for a vision quest” while wandering the Sonoma (“Multitude of Casualties”)—all the while seeking truth and hope.
Torn between the devil on her left shoulder and the angel on her right, Holly’s life is a dichotomy of cities and suburbs; parties and confession booths; the recklessness of being seventeen years old and the maturity of being thirty-three years old; sin and redemption. She weeps at the wreck her life has become, continually finding herself drawn back to God: “youth services always find a way to get their bloody cross into your druggy little messed up teenage life” (“Multitude of Casualties”). She comes to God, asking, “Lord what do you recommend? To a real sweet girl who’s made some not sweet friends. Lord what would you prescribe? To a real soft girl who’s having real hard times” (“Crucifixion Cruise”). Like her true Savior, who rose three days after being crucified, Holly comes close to literal and spiritual death but rebels against sin and all the people (drug dealers and deacons alike) trying to keep her down. She has the words “damn right I’ll rise again” tattooed into her flesh (“Your Little Hoodrat Friend”). Separation Sunday is her comeback story: “she’s been disappeared for years. Today she finally came back” (“How a Resurrection Really Feels”).
More than just a bunch of tracks strung together, Separation Sunday is a seamless concept album that through equal measures music and lyric takes the listener on a spiritual journey. It’s not a feel-good worship album. It’s not cut and dry in its message. It is, however, truthful in its depiction of drugs, sex, and the pull of God. The album is complex and wordy: it contains a plethora of Biblical and pop-culture references and even quotes lyrics from The Hold Steady’s first album, Almost Killed Me (Frenchkiss, 2004). Despite their genre-defying literacy, the band is growing in popularity and has been featured everywhere from The Village Voice and NPR to Rolling Stone and AOL. In fact, The Hold Steady has taken up acting: they debuted for Target.
Not surprisingly, the indie band’s concerts have been selling out on their current tour. The atmosphere at New York’s Bowery Ballroom when The Hold Steady played there this summer was akin to the lyrics of “Hornets! Hornets!”, the opening track on Separation Sunday: “I really like the crowds at the really big shows. People touching people that they don’t even know, yo.” Packed inside the New York City club were nondescript but leaning towards erudite twenty- and thirty-somethings. Lead singer Craig Finn preached the parable of Holly between greedy gulps of could-be communion wine. He clapped maniacally like a revival preacher inciting a congregation of concertgoers to find salvation, albeit temporary, in music. Meanwhile, the eccentric Franz Nicolay parlayed his masterful keyboarding for reflection. Tad Kubler (guitar), Galen Polivka (bass), and Bobby Drake (drums) rounded out the Brooklyn band with the passion of classic rock. The Hold Steady will be performing through March 2006, intermittently with Swearing at Motorists and Les Savy Fav. For further information, visit: http://theholdsteady.com.
Stephanie Nikolopoulos is a writer and editor in New York City. You can befriend her at http://www.myspace.com/themimespeaks.
Posted on February 15, 2006 12:00 AM
