The Hold Steady - "Heaven Is Whenever"

I put on Heaven Is Whenever with some trepidation. I had heard it wasn’t very good. Not bad either. Mediocre: such a damning word. I was told other reviewers were coming to the same conclusion. I listened to the first two tracks and felt disgusted. The Hold Steady’s records have been trending downward ever since 2005’s Separation Sunday and the trend seemed to be continuing. I put Heaven Is Whenever in the stack of CDs to trade in at CD Warehouse next Saturday.

But I remembered Dean Baltulonis had produced Heaven Is Whenever. Now he’s no household name but he had had a hand producing The Hold Steady’s first two – and best two – albums. That was what had made me hopeful in the first place about Heaven Is Whenever being a return to form. So I grabbed the CD out of the trade-in pile and gave it another chance.

Boy was I glad I did.

‘The Sweet Part of the City’ makes for a much better opening track when you expect it. I had always thought the lyrics with the “We like to play for you.” conclusion was a good starting point but the laid back tempo was disappointing. I wanted a rocker. But if you put on Heaven Is Whenever expecting an early 70s laid back, slide guitar-type of rock song, you don’t mind waiting for ‘Soft In The Center’ with the power chords that The Hold Steady repatented.

Because that’s what was so interesting about The Hold Steady when you first heard them: the way they melded 1970s rock ‘n’ roll with lyrics about a later era social scene. It was impossible to hear Separation Sunday or Boys and Girls in America and not think this was going to be THE band that rescued rock music from its whiny doldrums. Craig Finn couldn’t sing a lick but the way he crammed in words like Neal Cassidy talking in Jack Kerouac’s Original Scroll was invigorating. Finn sounded like one of “the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved ….”

But by Stay Positive, the fourth recording, it felt like The Hold Steady wasn’t so steady. It was an interesting record in that the slower songs worked far better than the rockers. It was sort of like Hüsker Dü’s Warehouse: Songs and Stories where we finally had a record with good Bob Mould songs only to have Grant Hart – the better Hüsker Dü songwriter – writing crap.

Well I’m glad that The Hold Steady has begun to rebound. There’s some criticism around that Finn is no longer cramming his lines with as many words as possible and even trying to sing on Heaven Is Whenever. Well the word count does seem to be down but I don’t hear any evidence of singing.

What is good is that the lyrics seem to be worth listening to again. I find Finn’s advice to the kid that “You won’t get every girl. You’ll love the ones you get best.” in Soft In The Center to be pretty solid advice. I find his point “Isn’t this what we wanted? Some major rock and roll problems.” in Rock Problems to be honest and a nice update on the answered prayers concept. In fact, what I love about The Hold Steady is these guys love rock and roll. I just read the lyrics to We Can Get Together and it’s all about playing records with references to songs by Pavement, Meatloaf and even one of Grant Hart’s best Hüsker Dü songs. (Maybe that’s why I mentioned Hüsker Dü before.) You got to admit saying “Do you remember Makes No Sense At All?” is clever.

I remember a long time ago when The Patti Smith’s Group’s Radio Ethiopia was getting creamed by that rock critic backlash, The Village Voice ran an article called Save This Rock And Roll Hero that was about why it was important to support Patti Smith. She was a beacon in an incredibly bleak rock landscape and she needed support. I feel that way about The Hold Steady. Give this band another chance. We have to save this rock and roll band. Play Heaven Is Whenever expecting a slow opener. Enjoy it for what it is and not what you want it to be. And you might find it is what you want it to be.