Kansas City Blog

I'd caught the Hold Steady once before, early last December at the Bottleneck (check out Bill's review). Been a believer ever since. Most casual music fans, I think, hear the classic rock-style guitars and piano/organ and simple song constructions and look at the Vagrant label on the CD and dismiss the Hold Steady because it isn't very trendy or very catchy. Musically, it's simple and barroom-y. And then there's singer Craig Finn's "hectoring narrative yell," as one writer put it -- so wordy and nearly tuneless. But listen closer and you'll hear rock's maddest prophet of the suburbs, a misplaced Beat poet raised on trips to the mall, MTV and the fruit of Edwin Traisman's toil. Finn's got insights into suburban American youth that Kevin Smith dreams of having.

In fact, I'm kind of surprised Finn hasn't scored a movie deal yet. I can see it now: The screenplay would be about this nerdy-cool kid (like the protag in Almost Famous) who's in awe of this girl who's a confidant-level friend of his -- they're both seniors in high school -- and he watches her careen through a cycle of partying and merry self-destruction, listening to her prattle on about her problems but never really talking himself. He half participates, half observes, always desiring her but mainly just curious about what the chick's gonna do next. She's got an aloof boyfriend who's in a popular local band. The hero's less-popular, scrappy-ass garage band gets a gig at a party that the girl's boyfriend's band was too hoity-toity to play. Something climactic and awesome happens. Our hero and the girl don't end up together, but the hero is released from his shell and acheives growth. It would be called Massive Nights and be a sleeper hit.

Don't get Finn wrong, though -- he's capable of narratives much less cliched, Hollywood, naive, etc. He can get pretty earthy, too. And more profound as well, like in this line from one of the HS's rare quiet songs, "Citrus:" I see Judas in the hard eyes of the boys working the corners / I feel jesus in the clumsiness of young and awkward lovers.

So, anyway, the Blue Note show. The first band, Blitzen Trapper, from Portland, was a surprisingly good mess of power rock, country and glam. Their slow, bouncy grooves, harmonized lead guitars and acoustic strumming evoked old Mott the Hoople, and I can't say I've said that before about any new bands. I dug.

The next band, Illinois from Pennsylvania, was not so much fun. The band couldn't decide whether to epic and slightly emo, like a Heartland version of Muse, or be closeted jam hippies like a Heartland version of 311. Or something between. Maybe it's the geographic schizophrenia behind the name. Or maybe it's because the lead singer is a hyperactive, cheerleading ham. In fact, the only way he could get the audience to show enthusiasm was to lead it in cheers for the Hold Steady. (Sorry, but it's true!)

Leading his band onstage and straight into "Stuck Between Stations," the smart scorcher that opens Boys and Girls in America, small, bespectacled, and unkempt Craig Finn lurched, smiled, swung his waist-level Gibson around and showered the front row with spit when he sang. "This next song is about the only vice I don't like," he said as the band fell into "Chips Ahoy" track two off Boys and Girls, about a girl who's good at picking ponies and scoring drugs.

The band placed its more recognizable songs in the front half of the set, stirring the audience into a mob of fist-thrusting drunken youth, then calmed them down toward the end with both of the quiet, earnest and Christianity-referencing songs off Boys and Girls ("Citrus" and "Arms and Hearts"). I don't remember what the last couple of songs were -- drinking Budweiser and Jameson with such gusto on stage, the Hold Steady made me wanna pound back the cold ones myself -- but it ended with guitarist Tad Kubler standing about 40 feet off the floor, standing atop the highest PA speaker and whanging on his guitar.

It was sweet. Go see them when you can. Here's what they looked like. (All photos by Scott Spychalski):