The Hold Steady

The Hold Steady is a young indie-rock formation that was assembled at the dawn of the twenty first century and soon managed to become recognizable among multitudes of other acts playing the same music. The band’s initiator, Craig Finn, started his music career long before he launched The Hold Steady. Throughout the nineties, he was the leader of the postpunk rock group Lifter Puller. After the collapse of this outfit, Craig decided to try another trend and start a new project. Together with another member of the no more existent Lifter Puller, Tad Kubler, and also with drummer Judd Council, bassist Galen Polivca and keyboardist Franz Nicolay, Finn composed a group that was named The Hold Steady. This happened in 2002 after Craig’s relocation to New York. Experienced and skilled in his craft, the musicians did not wait long to start active stage activity playing wherever and whenever they could to collect credits from critics and conquering the hearts of music lovers.

The Hold Steady were good at both, yet still far from most prominent radio stations. To get there, they needed to release a full-length album. Entitled Almost Killed Me, it hit the stores in 2004 delivered by a small-scale independent label. The record failed to offer at least one composition that would get heavy airplay, but it managed to produce a certain impression that was formed by Finn’s lyrics about the joys and sorrows of the youth life. In the end, the album became a must-have only for those hardcore fans of the genre who strived to build up a huge collection of official releases to boast of in front of each other. The material of the debut long player was a perfect stuff for The Hold Steady live performances. The majority of songs were based on hard guitar riffs, which made them brilliant concert numbers due to their energy and cheerful spirit. A year later, The Hold Steady prepared a darker album, Separation Sunday. All the eleven compositions were united by the concept of salvation quest. Finn’s vocal features had much in common with Springsteen’s singing manner from the seventies. Following that undoubtedly strong record, The Hold Steady became the main figures in the list of the most promising indie-rock acts.

Before the 2006 release of the third long player, The Hold Steady went through two big events to influence the life of the band. First, the group inked an agreement with the respectable label Vagrant, and then, they parted with Judd Council who left the drum kit to the current member Bobby Drake. The outfit’s subsequent effort, Boys and Girls in America, appeared another story from Finn and his colleagues about being young, in love and addicted to drugs. The general mood of the whole record came out of the brilliant opening track Stuck Between Stations, at rue rock song with verses about dead poets, broken hearts and inevitability of oblivion. After two more years, The Hold Steady issued one more studio album under the title Stay Positive (2008). This was the band’s first work to land in Top 30 Billboard. The material it featured bore some slight differences from what the musicians had been doing before. It disclosed a certain portion of melancholy and lost a bit of audacity and radicalism in the lyrics, which, however, was not enough to speculate on the group’s turn to another genre. In April 2009, The Hold Steady released their first official concert album, A Positive Rage. The record featured their performance in Chicago held in October 2007. In 2010 the band’s discography was enlarged by the fifth studio album Heaven Is Whenever. As the rockers stated, that record had become the result of their growing up, which had an impact both on the music and the lyrics. The Hold Steady’s evolution was enjoyed by their old fans, while the experts acclaimed Heaven Is Whenever, which was proved by positive reviews in various issues.