Heave Media

Have one on me

America's best bar band returns with a more textured, expansive album.

The Hold Steady

Heaven is Whenever

Released on May 04, 2010

Take a glance at any professional review of The Hold Steady’s riveting new album, Heaven is Whenever, and you’re likely to find the band and their work compared to the group most critics cite as their major influence: Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band.  It’s no surprise, either; both bands have astonishingly loyal followings, in part, because they exude blue collar charisma. Like The Boss and his crew, The Hold Steady’s songs are populated with assholes, townie girls and junkies. Pop critic Rob Sheffield once called The Hold Steady “the best bar band in America,” and I think that’s a fair description—Craig Finn’s lyrics are the kind of drunken storytelling you’d expect to hear at a dive bar, were they not set to music.

But if Bruce is Jersey’s native son, Heaven is Whenever is a reminder that The Hold Steady are decidedly Midwestern. The album’s opener, “The Sweet Part of the City,” mixes a mid-tempo bluegrass guitar line with images of Minnesota, from living on Hennepin to the long tour drives out from their home state: “It's a long way from Cedar-Riverside to Cedars-Sinai / Three times St. Paul to Cheyenne.” No band is more evocative of boozy nights and Midwest air, and The Hold Steady wear their roots like marks of honor. The first track is a change of pace from the expansive, rollicking songs that have opened the band’s last two albums, but it sets the tone for a disc that is more melancholic than anything else in the group’s catalogue. Keyboardist Franz Nicolay left the band on good terms at the end of 2009, and even with guitarist tad Kubler taking over piano duties, Nicolay’s absence is noticeable: The lack of rockabilly keyboards means the entire album moves at a more measured pace.

But that’s not necessarily a bad thing. What’s lost in bouncy melody is gained in texture. The band has said that they were listening to a lot of film scores by composers like Gustavo Santaolalla and Jon Brion, and Heaven is Whenever reflects that in songs that feel less directed and more expansive. The single “Hurricane J” and “Our Whole Lives” are both catchy as hell and full-band rock anthems, but tracks like “We Can Get Together” and “The Weekenders” are slow-building, and alternate stadium-ready choruses with ethereal verse and bridge work. The change in tone is rewarding; though the album’s style isn’t as diverse as 2008’s Stay Positive, it feels like there is more depth and more to appreciate on multiple listens.

Someone once told me that they loved The Hold Steady because they evoke emotion and scenery more than they tell an actual story, and I had that in my mind as I got to Heaven is Whenever’s last and best track, “A Slight Discomfort.” It starts with a hazy layer of piano, guitar and drums and ends in a sprawling burnout of shimmering guitars and pounding piano. It sounds like the soundtrack to last call, when you step back on the street in the warm space between drunk and sober. You might even get a little buzzed listening to it.

Posted by Ryan Peters on May 06, 2010 @ 12:00 am