Tom talked me into going to see the Hold Steady last night, although I'd never actually heard a note of their music before, despite reading a fair amount of their press. The show was 2 days after Tom's review of their new album ran on Pitchfork, and I can't really speculate on what difference it made on how many people were there, but it was pretty packed. Tom told me like a month ago that he was going to try and blow them up like the Arcade Fire. They played at the G-Spot, which is a gallery in Hampden that I'd never been to or even really heard of that apparently does shows. I don't know if I really got a handle on the Hold Steady just from watching their set. The lyrics seem to be the big thing with them, and if you don't know them already it's hard to make out more than maybe 50% of the words live. The riffs were good, though. I think I liked the slower/mid-tempo stuff more. I'd been a little wary of the self-consicous-bar-band thing, mainly because I like meat-and-potatoes rock and early Springsteen fine enough as it is without an indie filter. I'm surprised Elvis Costello doesn't seem to come up more in comparison to them; there's not much musical resemblence, but Craig Finn's appearance and stage presence, whether by coincidence or not, reminded me a lot of footage of a young, coked up EC from the 70's -- the way he gestures and points and waves his arms and grips the mic and pushes his glasses up his nose. Plus, the whole verbose guy with a nasal voice thing. I might have to check out their record to really get them. Otherwise, it was nice to chew the fat with Tom and meet his girlfriend Bridget and some more of his peoples.

Labels: concerts

This entry was posted on Sunday, May 08, 2005 at 2:02 PM. You can skip to the end and leave a response.