Stay Positive is the fourth studio album from The Hold Steady and follows their hugely popular 2006 release Girls And Boys In America. Working once again with producer John Agnello (Sonic Youth, Dinosaur Jr.), the album sees the band continue in the same direction their previous release took them, mixing classic bar-room style Rock with Craig Finn's half spoken/half sung lyrical tales of drinking, partying and love. Features the single 'Sequestered In Memphis'.
The Hold Steady's ascent and eventual breakthrough with 2006's Boys & Girls in America was never pre-ordained. If anything they did it without the tastemakers' consent. Their shtick is old-fashioned through and through, beginning with Thin Lizzy and ending with Bruce Springsteen, performed by men advanced enough to have experienced those touchstones first or second hand. And look at them--not exactly The Strokes, are they? But it was precisely their enthusiastic unoriginality, the fact that the clichés were piled on so thick and so fast, that they triumphed. And placed next to that unapologetically feel good record, that Stay Positive sounds so immediately brighter and more muscular is undoubtedly a great sign. Production is really cranked up--see the horns wedged into "Sequestered in Memphis", the REM mandolin texturing of "Both Crosses" and the surprising harpsichord flagrancy of "One for the Cutters". They're clearly determined to not be so easily pegged this time around, though admittedly they never exactly go that far off-piste. "Our songs are sing-along songs," announced Craig Finn semi-helpfully, and though the spirit is right, with such a conversational lyrical style that is rarely the case. It's more about the rock gestures and knowing when to punch the air. And there are instances aplenty, from the Pete Townsend-esque windmill power-chords in "Constructive Summer", to the overblown solo in "Lord I'm Discouraged" that is so "November Rain" it's practically going through Stephanie Seymour's trash (those not watching MTV in the mid-90s, hit Youtube). --James Berry
Customer Reviews:
Avg. Customer Rating: 4.0 / 5.0
One of the best of 2008:
If you are familiar with this band at all you have probably heard all of the comparisons from "The Replacements" to "Springsteen" and most of them are apt comparisons in their own little ways, but the sum of the parts is much better than the individial pieces here. Musically they have never been in finer form. This is an album that you just want to crank the volume on your stereo or while in your car...yet you can also dial it down and listen to Craig Finn's lyrics which like Springsteens are often... more info
Are you kidding me!!:
**2 1/2 stars** Why is there hype for this album and why do people have this in their top ten lists? I can think of at least 30 albums this year that blow this trite & repetitive garbage away. Maybe I'm missing something. A band that sounds like something that would happen if you mixed a trailer trash Bruce Springsteen with a "We forgot how to play catchy hooks" Bad Religion. The impromptu over the top guitar solo in `Lord, I'm Discouraged' is so ridiculous it just adds as a precursor to the rest... more info
They'll always have Boys and Girls in America:
After the major leap forward that Boys and Girls in America was, The Hold Steady stood a pretty good chance of having me completely forgive them for their first two albums. Perhaps singer/songwriter Craig Finn's Catholic Church would have required him to confess the musical sins of his past, but I would simply ask that he make another record comparable in quality to their third one. Unfortunately, their fourth album - Stay Positive - doesn't quite scale such grand heights. On Boys and Girls in America,... more info
Stay Postive People:
When I first heard the The Hold Steady, I didn't get them. I could not get past Craig Finn's vocals and the simple regurgitation of rock and roll cliches. So I figured they were trying to trick me. Why would a band in the new century just play straight ahead rock music? I had to be missing something and that annoyed me. Included in this recording you should know: There isn't any tricky production. There isn't soci-political statements being tossed up as enlightened dogma. After the second... more info
