On the title track of the Hold Steady's fourth and latest record, Stay Positive (in stores this Tuesday), Craig Finn observes, "It's one thing to start it with a positive jam/and it's another thing to see it on through." Of course, bands have been singing about the need to stay positive for about as long as hardcore has been a part of punk, the Youth of Today and the early 7 Seconds among them.
But when the Hold Steady belt out, "We gotta stay positive," it's more complicated than any straight-ahead youth-crew sloganeering. There's a sense of desperation, even defeat, to Finn's exhortations. The Hold Steady's PMA isn't indomitable, it's doubtful and quixotic. Their optimism flies in the face of all reasonable evidence that things really are fucked. And that tension makes their sing-along songs a hell of a lot more interesting than any hardcore anthem.
Like much of the Hold Steady's work, Stay Positive is concerned with what happens after the sing-along song stops, when the hardcore shows taper off or the parties get busted, when the barflies and the bands start getting too old. How do you hold on to youthful idealsâhow do you stay positiveâin the face of life's inevitable disappointments?
Finn has made his name telling stories of hopeless heroines, druggy hoodrats, and lapsed Catholics, and Stay Positive continues to look at lives pulled between the lures of nightlife and the realities of daylight, between religion and rock 'n' roll (itself a religion), between youthful energy and the inevitable decline of aging. The Hold Steady's frequently tragic characters may not provide any concrete answers to the question of how to stay positive, but they make for some fine cautionary, sometimes inspirational, stories.
"One for the Cutters" borrows broad themes from Breaking Awayâteenage rebellion, small-college-town class antagonismsâto tell the story of a romance between a college girl and a townie boy marked by sex and drugs and knife fights. "Lord, I'm Discouraged" finds Finn's faith wavering as he chases after/cares for another bruised and bandaged beauty. "Joke About Jamaica" finds tragedy in the jukebox of a Midwest dive bar and its patron saint, another tragic, drunk, loose groupie woman, aging and yearning for glory days, losing her edge as the "new girls are coming up like some white unopened flowers." Part "Certain Songs," part "Glory Days."
The title track, for all its subtler concerns, is just a motherfucker of a Hold Steady anthem, its chorus all rising chords and gang-chanted "whoa-oh-oh" and the half-inspiring, half-desperate refrain, "We gotta stay positive." The verses, too, are some of the album's sharpest, with Finn dropping punk/hardcore credentials, talking about "back in the day... when the Youth of Today and the early 7 Seconds taught [him] some of life's most valuable lessons" before invoking past Hold Steady scenes ("there's gonna come a time/when she's gonna have to go/with whoever's gonna get her the highest," "the chaperone crowned us the king and queen... and all those little lambs from my dreams/well, they were there, too").
The band's old album-length narrative threads are seemingly gone for good, but this album continues the Hold Steady's career-long tradition of self-referentiality and continuity, hiding little lyrical Easter eggs and returning to old themes that both converse with and reward longtime fans while providing incentive for new converts to dig into their back catalog. "Yeah Sapphire" is a sturdy, satisfying ode to yet another woman beset by prophetic visions, Ă la "Chips Ahoy." Catchy album closer "Slapped Actress" returns to Ybor City (it almost killed them again), playing at the line between reality and fiction, Finn as actor versus Finn as confessionalist, acknowledging that sometimes the fourth wall gets a hole punched in it ("sometimes actresses get slapped/sometimes fake fights turn out bad"); it would be pompous navel-gazing if it weren't such a smart number.
Stay Positive is less consistent than Boys and Girls in America. "Navy Sheets" is little more than a string of one liners and a keyboard hook. "Magazines" is another misstep, primarily due to its weakly pleading chorus. Biblical desert dirge "Both Crosses," with its invocations of Jesus and Judas, does nothing so much as recall superior mid-album chill-out "Citrus."
Throughout, though, the band remain adept at the big rock gesturesâwindmilling guitars, charging rhythms, trembling then surging pianos, clap-along breakdowns, great "whoa-oh" chorusesâif not quite stadium-sized, then certainly massive enough for the summer festival circuit. There are also some variations on the band's now well-established outsized bar rockâthe horns on "Sequestered in Memphis" or the tipsy, dancing harpsichord of "One for the Cutters."
For all the album's despair and anxieties, it does, ultimately, remain positive, and nowhere more than on opening track "Constructive Summer." The song is simultaneously a rousing anthem ("We're gonna build something this summer!") built on pounding piano and buzz-saw guitars and an elegy, with its lyrics about drinking atop water towers, working "in the mill until you die," and toasting "saint Joe Strummer." The song pulls a neat trick, acknowledging that the things we build won't last, that our best efforts will eventually burn out, but that they're worth building anyway.
