The Hold Steady!

One of the great mysteries about music – and this is obviously something I think of quite a lot seeing how I’ve been more or less preoccupied with guitars and hooks since I was like 8 – is how your first-impression of something is almost always wildly off the mark. This struck me the other day when I started listening to the Hold Steady’s new album Stay Positive (that today received a whoppingly awesome review over at the ‘Fork).

Now, I am a HUGE fan of the Hold Steady, and their last album 2006’s Boys And Girls In America was my favorite album of 2006 (if you don’t think I have an official top-20 for every year since 2000 you obviously don’t fathom the level of geekness prevalent in these matters…). It was an amazing album, and songs like Stuck Between Stations, Chips Ahoy! or really damn near any song on that album have been in heavy rotation ever since. And like much music I listen to, I’d even say pretty much ALL the music I listen to, the Hold Steady is an acquired taste. But after a while, you listen to those songs you love and you don’t understand how anyone could possibly not absolutely love this incredible mix of Hüsker Dü and Bob Dylan, of the Replacements and Bruce Springsteen, of Abba and the Supremes (aight, I made that last one up). Point being that after a while you lose sight of the fact that appreciating music is so thoroughly subjective and you start thinking that everyone would love this.

This is all by way of saying that I was really surprised and really disappointed when I suddenly realized that I was decidedly cool and non-plussed about the Hold Steady’s new album after my first listen. It was all there, I could relate to the songs but the deep appreciation wasn’t there.

But then a few days later my brother remarked on how great the new album was, and I listened to it again….appreciated it a little more, listened to it again, liked yet a little more. And now here I am, as obsessed about the new album as I ever was about the old one! Stay Positive is right up there with the other great albums of 2008 thus far; Devotchka, Drive-By Truckers, Mudhoney, R.E.M., Nick Cave and Blood On The Wall.

It all goes to show that music is so completely subjective, with certain kinds of music (music I love I reckon) you have to immerse yourself in it, know it before you love it. It is not entirely accessible perhaps at first listen, but it grows on you. At first it is just sound, maybe a powerful hook grabs you but it takes time for it to sink in.

Or maybe I’m just a geek.

Check out a sample of the Hold Steady up on the top-left in the youtube player, one of the best songs of 2006.
Incidentally, the frontman in The Hold Stedy is exactly what I'd look like if I was a rock star! And I would too quote Kerouac in the first line of my best song.