The Great Unsteady

Heaven Is Whenever is The Hold Steady's most musically varied record yet.

by Patrick Rapa

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Published: May 5, 2010

The Hold SteadyHeaven Is Whenever | (Vagrant The Hold Steady Heaven Is Whenever | (Vagrant)

[ sniffling indie ]

When wine-swigging keyboardist Franz Nicolay left The Hold Steady last year, he told Paste: "They have their one big idea — making literate, wordy lyrics over big anthemic rock — and the last two records were about as good as I felt like I could do with that idea."

Singer-guitarist-lyricist Craig Finn believes in omens, and being called a one-trick drug mule by a guy who's committed himself to life behind a handlebar mustache was probably an epiphany.

And here we are with Heaven Is Whenever, The Hold Steady's most musically varied record yet. Among its 10 tracks are extended ballads, Southern-tinged arena rockers and strange studio anomalies. Not every gamble pays off. Finn's signature speak-singing is occasionally replaced with dumb old sing-singing. There's an unforgivable sound effect on "Barely Breathing." Maybe one too many thin, midtempo numbers throughout. But "The Weekenders" (the first single) and "We Can Get Together" (a heartbreaker about '90s twee darlings Heavenly) are as gripping and memorable as anything this band has ever done.

And then there's this bit, snuck into "Soft in the Center":

"Man, if money didn't matter then I might tell you something new. You can't tell people what they want to hear if you also want to tell the truth."

It's hard to stay cynical with The Hold Steady blaring, but that line echoes long after the music stops. It's the sound of a songwriter shrugging in the hole he dug himself.

Five albums in, plus all the stuff he did with Lifter Puller, Finn's lyrical m.o., the reason the critics and fans go nuts, is well established. It's gotta be tough to break free of that. He doesn't stray far from it here. These songs are adorned with Hold Steady staples: hospitals and bars, evangelical declarations, sly euphemisms for ugly acts, references to literature and pop culture with varying degrees of obscurity, crazy positivity. The gang's all here, too: high-as-hell scenesters, bloodied users and mysterious women who do mysterious things.

Some things "she" does/says on the new album: 1) wants to know what's going on in the room that's all the way in the back; 2) kept threatening to turn us in; 3) said the theme of this party's The Industrial Age, and you came in dressed like a train wreck.

Who "she" might be: 1) St. Theresa; 2) Hurricane J — "They didn't name her for a saint/ They named her for a storm"; 3) Your Little Hoodrat Friend — not called by name, but a known lurker in Finn's lyrics.

Teetering on the edge of semantic saturation, the word "heaven" appears on just about every track. Sometimes it's the place; usually it's just a namecheck: "She played Heaven Isn't Happening. She played Heaven is a Truck. ... " By the end you'll wonder whether the album's obsessing over saved souls and the afterlife, or merely ruminating on the word itself. It's a smartly gray area, and part of why The Hold Steady works. These are Catholic prayers the atheists know the words to. Drug songs the drinkers sing along to. If you never bought into it before, there's nothing much in Heaven for you.

(pat@citypaper.net)

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