The Hold Steady / Stay Positive: “Let’s clutch and kiss and sing and shake, tonight let’s try to levitate”

“Back then it was beautiful
The boys were sweet and musical
The laser lights looked mystical
. . . Messed up still felt magical“

The more I listen to The Hold Steady, the more I think they might have what it takes to save rock & roll from crushing heartlessness, unoriginal pallor, and detached apathy. You might have noticed that people tend to fall diametrically on one side or the other of the Hold Steady spectrum. My friend Barber once described lead singer Craig Finn as “a crazy inebriated prophet, ear tuned to the roar, shouting out real-life scripture over the ocean of noise of society or a really loud bar band.” Yet I have other friends who violently object to the whole concept whenever I broach it. The Hold Steady must be something you either get –and get hard– or don’t. On this new album especially, I find it difficult to understand the latter.

On their fourth studio album Stay Positive (which drops in physical form July 15th) these five guys from Minneapolis stretch their songwriting out down new roads, and as always everything feels pretty epic and massive. Pressed up against gorgeously grand and subversively hopeful songs, Finn weaves complex stories of lust and confusion, of cutting and car crashes, of oracles and angels.

You can get an accurate impression of the feelings contained on Stay Positive from the cover and superb inner album art. Despite the muddy ground and the nauseatingly yellow sky with all the color bled out, there is always the potential for something exciting to happen tonight, for some urgency to swoop down and make you feel alive for forty-five minutes. The feeling of continuity that connects all of the Hold Steady’s albums is present here, through serial characters like Holly –who has been in the hospital, shaky but still trying to shake it, and now the girl who won’t say hi to him– and also through recurrent themes that perennially crop up to make a Hold Steady song what it is. The landscape is desolate, but the kids in the songs still yearn.

Stay Positive is also their album of bleeding and miracles — a fitting dichotomy for a band that plumbs both the gritty violent parts of our psyche as well as the redemption. On one of the album’s strongest tracks, Finn calls a girl named Sapphire (who possesses some hallucinogenic visionary abilities) and begs, “I know you said don’t call until I’m clean . . . but I’m not drunk, I’m cut. I’m gushing blood, and I need someone to come and pick me up.” I find something in the desperation of how Finn wrenches and pleads out that line that reverberates throughout the album. There’s talk of crucifixion, visions, and miracles, and later he sings “Don’t mention bloodshed, don’t tell them it hurts, don’t say we saw angels, they’ll take us straight to the church.” Make no mistake, this is an album of the mud and the blood and the beer, but along with that comes some old-fashioned revival-style hallelujah.

Musically, Stay Positive is as richly dense as anything they’ve done. I always find a sort of deliverance in the crashing piano cadences and expansive guitar solos of the Hold Steady, even as the lyrics detail another sad night, another desperate move. J Mascis guests stars (playing banjo on “Both Crosses”), as do Ben Nichols of Lucero and Patterson Hood of Drive-By Truckers (on backing vocals in a few songs). This is an album I am obviously enjoying immensely through the throes of this sweltering summer.

LISTEN: Sequestered In Memphis & Lord I’m Discouraged (stream)

NEW CONTEST: Thanks to the good folks at Vagrant, I have Hold Steady largess to scatter upon ye lucky masses like manna from the heavens.

Three lucky winners will win the Stay Positive CD (with the 3 bonus tracks on it, I think) and two of you will be spinning the black circle with the vinyl LP. The vinyl is 160 gram (black color), gatefold, and will feature one bonus track “Ask Her For The Adderall.”

Please leave me a comment indicating which format you are entering for, and since there are so many good ones to choose from, let’s talk about favorite Hold Steady lyrics.

Walk away with these lines from the new album — they leave you with that ache:

“Girls didn’t seem so difficult
Boys didn’t seem so typical
It was all warm and white and wonderful
We were all invincible

We were wasps with new wings
Now we’re bugs in the jar
We were hot soft and pure
Now we’re scratched up in scars.“

POSTSCRIPT OF OLD CONTEST BUSINESS: The Joe Strummer prize pack garnered some of the very best comments yet left on Fuel/Friends. From lighting Joe’s cigarette (a tale I verified with the cool commenter – oh, to have a lighter just when Joe Strummer fumbles for one outside a Vegas hotel) to talking to him backstage, wracked with nervous anticipation, you gotta go read all the great tales. Because I’m soft, I went with a randomly-selected winner: James from Brooklyn. Congrats! Let me know where to send it.

The Lovecats (covered) :: Go and throw all the songs we know into the sea

I do not love cats by any means. Kittens, sure, and I’ve met a few decent cats but their overall redeeming qualities were their dog-like traits. The musical Cats also is something I never ever need to see.

This is my own personal seventh circle of burning hell.

However recently I was listening to the fine new Luke Doucet album (loved the last one) and found myself enjoying the twangy creativity of his cover of the 1983 Cure song “The Lovecats.” It is a challenging song to cover, because it’s so weird that really only Robert Smith and his eyelinerness can pull it off. I shuffled around to the sexy OK Go version of it (noble effort), then Googled out a few others. So now you can hear the lines, “We should have each other to tea, we should have each other with cream” through a variety of different lenses. Including (?!) Paul Anka, as much as that makes your skin crawl.

The Lovecats – Luke Doucet
The Lovecats – OK Go
The Lovecats – Paul Anka
The Lovecats – Jamie Cullum & Katie Melua
The Lovecats – Tricky

The original: The Lovecats – The Cure

Chrome-yo gabba gabba

This amuses me. Montreal/NYC electronic synthpop duo Chromeo just became the latest band-of-the-moment to film a segment for the trippy, spastic, retro kids show Yo Gabba Gabba.

We’ll find out soon if their set is as reassuringly encouraging as The Shins or as WTF as Biz Markie. For now though, check out this new mp3 from the deluxe edition of 2007′s Fancy Footwork, which is out today on Vice Records:

Bonafied Lovin (Yuksek Remix) – Chromeo

Monday Music Roundup

Anyone who went through the ’80s knows that maybe sometimes, for some reasons, you might just miss the side ponytail. On Saturday night I went to a (totally radical) ’80s dance party out in the suburbs of Arvada and bravely dressed in my best finery from that decade. It felt so excellent and dare I say liberating to revisit the hairstyle of 5th grade and to not be alone.

The entertainment (+ fun complimentary personal mixing lesson!) was provided by DJ Hot To Death and DJ Goose from Denver. If you are feeling listless and cubicle-bound this morning, you can download a sizzling DJ Hot To Death set from the preset at the Film On The Rocks series last week at Red Rocks:

DJ Hot To Death set @ Red Rocks
Includes music from – The White Stripes * Santogold * Dropkick Murphys * Gnarls Barkley * Electric 6 * Modest Mouse * Crookers * AC/DC * She Wants Revenge * The Pixies * Diplo * The Clash * and more…
It’s a bit of Saturday night fun to start things off this Monday morning.

Stop Rip & Roll
J Roddy Walston and The Business
Just click play – this song hits like a most jubilant and unlikely combination of the Pogues and Queen. Tennessee-born J Roddy Walston and The Business have recorded one of my favorite tracks to be posted here in a long time. Second in a miniature series of “Bands Who Have Opened Recently for The Hold Steady,” JR&TB come flying at you and are completely unrelenting. Purveyors of a scathing live show, the Arkansas Times wrote “they’re loud, relentless, and wear you out before they’re even halfway done with you.” Well, I don’t wear out easily but I can see how they’d come close with stuff like this. Hail Mega Boys is out now on the Southern Brethren label.

123 Stop
The Postelles
Hailing from New York City, The Postelles are four fresh-faced younguns whose new album is also the inaugural production effort of Albert Hammond Jr. Citing obvious influences, our friends over at MOKB are calling this new single “Strokes-meets-Billy Joel.” From the traditional retro sugar of the chorus hooks to the teenager-in-love laments of songs you may know from a handful of decades ago, this is infectious and delightful music. The Hammond project is forthcoming, although there is an older EP available on iTunes. The Postelles will be playing Lollapalooza and some dates with The Whigs in the coming months, and I don’t see how their live show could be anything other than fun.

Wreck
The Bittersweets
As much as I am enjoying the new Ryan Auffenberg album, I’ll have to admit occasionally missing the perfect counterpoint to his smooth vocals that was provided by singer Hannah Prater on older songs like “Under All The Bright Lights.” Prater’s band The Bittersweets (also featuring members Chris Meyers and former Counting Crows / Luce / Third Eye Blind drummer Steve Bowman) has relocated from Northern California to the Americana heartland of Nashville. Their new album Goodnight San Francisco is out September 9th on Compass Records, and it’s good to hear Hannah’s gorgeously warm and winning voice again as she questions “Why’d you go and wreck this all?“

A Sweet Summer’s Night On Hammer Hill
Jens Lekman
This 2005 song recently came up on my summer shuffling and seems so fitting for July, all shiny trumpets and handclaps. Jens Lekman is one in the stream of likable Swedish acts to charmingly convince me to lend an ear. This song is a little cabaret in an unrehearsed way, conjuring up soulful images of standing around on a street-corner, singing and clapping as a fire hydrant goes off (I guess maybe that universally carries as a summer sentiment over to Sweden?). From Oh, You’re So Silent Jens (Secretly Canadian Records).

Independence Day with Elliott Smith

. . . and sixteen other songs. On the 4th of July in 2000, Elliott Smith performed this superb quality set at the Embryo Festival in Gothenburg, Sweden. Not your standard BBQ / beer / fireworks soundtrack for today — but better.

ELLIOTT SMITH
JULY 4, 2000
EMBRYO FESTIVAL (FM BROADCAST)
Ballad of Big Nothing
Independence Day
Junk Bond Trader
Son of Sam
Everything Means Nothing
Cupid’s Trick
LA
Strung Out Again
Sweet Adeline
Bled White
Between the Bars
Color Bars
Stupidity Tries
A Question Mark
2:45 AM
In The Lost and Found
Can’t Make a Sound

So tired of being sexy

Brazilian band Cansei de Ser Sexy (CSS) has one of the best band names ever, for two reasons:
1) it literally means “I got tired of being sexy” (and who hasn’t?)
2) the name’s taken from something Beyonce once said to that effect. I mean, really.

Singing in both Portuguese and English, CSS weaves together shiny, syncopated electro-pop with an edge of irreverent glamour and charming naivete. The Guardian once wrote that “they sound like an unlikely, brilliantly wrong fusion of Tom Tom Club, dance culture and the Fall.”

Although CSS favors topics of pop culture and night hedonism (song titles include “Jager Yoga,” “Let’s Make Love And Listen To Death From Above,” and “Meeting Paris Hilton”), their music is not vapid. The new song below evokes a lot more Karen O than Paris H, even though they sometimes sing about the latter. And I say this with affection because my new job is in this field, but they also look like an innocent group of foreign exchange students. You practically want to help them find the library, bring them to a soccer game, or maybe take them home for Thanksgiving when the dorms close.

For your listening pleasure, three tunes: Some new hotness from their upcoming release, a smokingly sassy remix of “Music Is My Hot Hot Sex” (on repeat ’round here), and their smashing efforts at remixing Swedish indie sensation Lykke Li.

Rat Is Dead (Rage) – Cansei de Ser Sexy/CSS
Music Is My Hot Hot Sex (Switch feat Mapei mix) – CSS
Little Bit (CSS remix) – Lykke Li

The new CSS album Donkey (produced in Brazil, mixed in L.A.) is out July 21 on Sub Pop.

Oh, and it’s gonna be a party with these kids out at Red Rocks. CSS is one of the penultimate acts capping off the Monolith Festival this September, playing at 9:45pm Sunday, September 14th. Come, dance.

The future is unwritten (I think he might have been our only decent teacher)

“No one struggled more manfully with the gap between the myth and the reality of being a spokesman for your generation than Joe Strummer. Were it not for the Clash, punk would have been just a sneer, a safety pin and a pair of bondage trousers. Instead, the incendiary lyrics of the Clash inspired 1,000 more bands on both sides of the Atlantic to spring up and challenge their elders – and the man that we all looked to was Joe Strummer.”

– Billy Bragg eulogy to Joe Strummer, Dec. 23, 2002

The 2007 documentary by English filmmaker Julien Temple on the life of Clash frontman Joe Strummer will be released to DVD on July 8th. In The Future Is Unwritten, Temple (who knew Strummer for 30+ years) follows the path from his formative years in groups like The 101ers, to “the only band that mattered,” and then into his solo career and the legacy he left at his untimely death.

Keys To Your Heart – The 101ers (early Joe Strummer band)

NEW CONTEST: Fuel/Friends has a package deal of the DVD and the CD soundtrack to give away to one of y’all. Leave me a comment telling me something you love about Joe Strummer — a lyric, a story, a song, a quote, you pick. One winner will be randomly selected in a week.

TRAILER:

This cover isn’t on the soundtrack, but . . . I love it:

Redemption Song – Joe Strummer & Johnny Cash

Also, thanks to Cara for bringing this on my radar. Do jet over to Scatter o Light to check out the cool Bono/Strummer song she has, one of the last songs Joe worked on before his death.

WRAP-UP: Speaking of contests, we’ve got this old business: the Brushfire Record vinyl sampler winners are readers Scott Orr and frankie dartz. Please provide me your mailing addresses and I’ll get these babies in the mail with a smiley little note just for you.