What are you doing on Tuesday? Well add this to your list: buying The Hold Steady‘s new album, the tantalizingly-titled Heaven is Whenever (The cover art features a hand raised in… praise?). This band is one of our favorites here at Mockingbird, and for good reason. Check out this staggering lyrical nugget from “How a Resurrection Really Feels”:
The priest just kinda laughed.
The deacon caught a draft.
She crashed into the Easter Mass with her hair done up in broken glass.
She was limping left on broken heels.
When she said Father can I tell your congregation how a resurrection really feels?
If you haven’t given them a listen, do yourself a favor, put down your woodworking/scrapbooking/bacon/novel writing/cursing at the TV/etc., and go here to check out their new album (Thanks, NPR!). The album is worthy of a longer review (like: first, it rocks hard. Also, there are guitar solos here the likes of which I haven’t heard since I was into pop heavy metal in the late 1980s), but until then just listen. Also: A video from another track from their must-have 2005 album, Separation Sunday. This song is pretty much unbelievably good:
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2 responses to “Hold It! The Hold Steady Have a New Album”
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love this post! Thanks Aaron. I was thinking the hand is reaching up for help or to hold onto heaven? It's such a cool cover.
I think the band's theology (they're clearly going there with the cover art) is best expressed by the artwork on the inside which shows the hand sinking, and eventually drowning in a pool of water, and curiously, the photo on the back page shows a wet body emerging.
I've been trying to write a Hold Steady post for a long time, but it's hard to nail their lyrics down. It's clear singer Craig Finn has had positive and negative interactions with Christianity from his lyrics, which constantly slip in and out of Christian language, intermingled with the stories he tells. Like in "Both Crosses":
she saw the film right before it came out
and at first she thought judas might go for the mouth
and she saw the nails and she saw the hands
she saw the crowd and she heard the band
and the new kid begged them not to do it
and jesus just said hey i still love you judas
since you've been up in massachusetts
An excellent band with a lot of humanity. If you liked this album, "Stay Positive" and "Boys and Girls in America" won't disappoint. The loss of their keyboardist before this album left a little wanting, in my opinion.