The Hold Steady

The Hold Steady

Separation Sunday (Frenchkiss)

The stories of the Hold Steady are one part religious guilt to two parts Sunday morning hangover. Singer Craig Finn's voice is grating, nasal, like the guy screaming in your ear at last call about conspiracy theories and how shitty light beer is. The music is like some unholy amalgamation of Born to Run-era Springsteen and Billy Joel shazam. This is a good thing. As on their 2004 LP, Almost Killed Me, their second album, Separation Sunday, is still fixated on recurring characters, parties, and booze. Characters in the congregation are self-inflicters, self-medicaters, haters, hood rats, dealers, skaters. There's a girl named Hallelujah, a pimp named Charlemagne, and a place called Penetration Park. There are big choruses and bigger riffs. There are horn solos. Yet it's great to see they're still in a bar band. Opener "Hornets! Hornets!" is slow, churning classic rock. On "Cattle and Creeping Things," Finn bleats, "You on the streets with a tendency to preach to the choir, wired for sound and down with whatever – I heard Gideon did you in Denver," mirroring the bounce of Almost Killed Me's "Positive Jam." "Multitude of Casualties" bobs and weaves through "Youth services always find a way to get their bloody cross into your druggy little messed up teenage life." Beyond the smell of beer and vomit, there is salvation.