The Hold Steady kicked off its 2004 debut with the
sarcastic "Positive Jam," a bitterly funny rant recounting a century's worth of
disasters and disappointments in just over three minutes. Four years later,
singer Craig Finn
has cleared the bile out of his throat and turned into a regular Norman Vincent
Peale on Stay Positive, a record informed as much by the glowing response to 2006's Boys
And Girls In America as
Finn's usual Coors 'n' Catholicism fixations. Like the run of victory-lap tours
The Hold Steady has done the past few years, Stay Positive is the work of a band that
won't take its current beloved status for granted. Finn even takes a moment
during Stay Positive's title track to give a grateful shout-out to his fans. "We
couldn't have even done this if it wasn't for you," he sings, stopping just
short of the inevitable "I love you, man!" capper.
The thing about victory laps is that they end
where they began; similarly, Stay Positive is the first Hold Steady record to sound
almost exactly like its predecessor. Stylistic departures like the harpsichord
tinkling on "One For The Cutters" and the spooky, Zeppelin-esque balladry of "Both
Crosses" aside, Stay Positive sticks with the slick, surgingly anthemic formula
of Boys And Girls In America. And that formula—consisting of E Street
piano flourishes, hair-metal guitar solos, and other assorted arena-rock clichés
that The Hold Steady revives with straight-faced sincerity—arguably works
better than ever on the dynamic one-two punch of "Constructive Summer" and "Sequestered
In Memphis," which rank with the band's best rockers. Elsewhere, Finn drops old
catchphrases in his lyrics like a funny Mike Myers, but for the first time, his
words take a back seat to The Hold Steady's most accessible music yet. A record
made for blasting and getting blasted, Stay Positive makes it easy to follow
through on its title.