Stay Positive

The Hold Steady weren't the likeliest candidates for success. Pulling together after the demise of the imaginative, verbose, and mostly overlooked indie act Lifter Puller, Craig Finn relocated to New York to start a new band. Holding to his distinctive poet-lost-at-karaoke delivery, Finn-- like the Replacements and Hüsker Dü before him-- began unashamedly mining classic rock radio for inspiration. Surprisingly, it's the latter group you can hear on opening track "Constructive Summer", and not just in its title's resemblance to one of Hüsker Dü's most celebrated songs.

In "Constructive Summer," the opening and arguably best track on Stay Positive, Craig Finn intones "Our psalms are sing-a-long songs." True, the best ones really are anthems you want to be shouting while climbing water towers, toasting St. Joe Strummer ("I think he might've been our only decent teacher"), and drinking whiskey coke's with no ice in double time -- which is the "get hammered" summer plan Finn and cohorts lay out. In "Constructive Summer" he also tells us, "Let this be my annual reminder / that we can all be something bigger." If there's any major letdown on S tay Positive, it's that there isn't a bigger song in the collection. Sure, bands often front load, or give you their best first, but this song feels classic after only a few listens, setting the bar really high. When Craig says he thinks Strummer "might've been our only decent teacher," he's likely forgetting Blake Schwarzenbach, who he's mentioned as an inspiration, and who haunts this tune in particular, for sure. It doesn't help the Jawbreaker flashbacks to have gravelly Ben Nichols singing on "Sequestered In Memphis," another of the album's truly kick-ass tracks.