The Hold Steady - Boys and Girls in America

Some musicians write songs; The Hold Steady speak in albums. Delving into the innocuous world of relationships, Boys and Girls in America punctuates its theme by repeating the album’s namesake throughout the record. More radio-friendly than its predecessors, it is the band’s first album on Vagrant Records. It keeps the labels telltale emo sound to a minimum, letting only a few ironic “whoa”s slip in between Craig Finn’s gritty voice and Tad Kubler’s masterful guitar work. The album and its supporting tour—the band played to a rambunctious crowd at New York’s Irving Plaza two days before their album release—prove that The Hold Steady is the antithesis of its name: the band isn’t holding steady; they’re racing to the forefront of this generation’s rock movement.

Lyrically and musically lighter than last year’s Separation Sunday (Frenchkiss), Boys and Girls in America resurrects the concept album’s endearing Holly, Charlemagne, and Gideon, letting them mingle with a new cast of party kids and star-crossed lovers. Each character represents a different aspect of relationships. The album’s first single, “Chips Ahoy,” embodies the classic money-can’t-buy-me-love story. Much like the Counting Crows song “Another Horse Dreamer’s Blues,” it tells the story of a girl with an uncanny ability to win at the racetrack who suppresses her emotions. “Massive Nights” and “Party Pit” are coming-of-age tales: “Massive Nights” illustrates the cockiness that hides the insecurity of adolescents who “fumbled through the jitterbug” at a chaperoned dance. The kids are reunited with old flames after going away to college in “Party Pit.” The song is at least semi-autobiographical: At The Hold Steady’s acoustic set as part of New York’s River to River Festival in July, Finn talked about how all teenagers have a hang out and that in Minnesota it was called the party pit. Although he went to Boston College, Finn, like the character in the song, “came back to start a band of course” (the band Finn started was Lifter Puller). Fellow Minnesotan Dave Pirner, of Soul Asylum fame, lends his voice to “Chillout Tent,” about two noncommittal overdosers. “You Can Make Him Like You” paints girls as “bruises,” hurt and damaged, who pick and reject guys to improve their identity. The likewise cynical and antifeminist “Southtown Girls”—a country-tinged song in which Frantz Nicolay goes crazy brilliant on the harmonica—tells guys that blasé girls are the loyal ones.

Boys and girls are “crushing each other with colossal expectations,” according to “Stuck Between Stations.” The love they so desperately search for is perhaps only fulfilled by the Jesus that Holly cries about in “First Night.” Throughout the album, Finn shows that selfish relationships get you nowhere. In the chorus to “Stuck Between Stations,” he says that a sexy girl who was “not that strict of a Christian” also wasn’t “all that great of a girlfriend.” In “Citrus,” he poignantly laments, “I’ve had kisses that make Judas seem sincere,” but contrasts this to “I feel Jesus in the tenderness of honest nervous lovers.” The song’s chorus, “Lost in fog and love and faithless fear,” is rhythmically reminiscent of the Burlap to Cashmere line in which the singer petitions God, “Love me, light me, give me, guide me” (“Mansions,” Anybody Out There?); yet their lyrical disparity suggests the importance of faith. Redemption is acknowledged in “Some Kooks”: “The sheets stain but the sins wash away.”

The hurried rambling about failed romances but fervent friendships, God, drugs, music, and all-over-the-map locations are reminiscent of Jack Kerouac. This comes as no surprise since the album title itself actually comes from a line in the Beat Generation classic On the Road. In the road-trip novel, protagonist Sal Paradise observes, “Boys and girls in America have such a sad time together; sophistication demands that the submit to sex immediately without proper preliminary talk. Not courting talk—real straight talk about souls, for life is holy and every moment is precious.” Finn sings, “There are nights when I think that Sal Paradise was right.”