beginning a new year with the hold steady

A new year, a new world.

2008, for me, was a year of a great many unpleasant sorts of discoveries and a number of events I would rather have forgotten. In terms of personal triumphs and achievements, it’s not the kind of year one would like to have. In terms of musical discovery, however, it was the perfect time for me to come to terms with the Hold Steady.

Sometimes the best way to understand everything you hate about yourself is to stare it down unblinking; this results in some tremendously awkward moments. Nowhere are these moments more awkward or more tremendous than in the works of the Hold Steady.

At the risk of making harsh generalizations, I like to think there are two kinds of listeners. There’s the kind of person who listens to songs as narratives, marrying the plot subtexts with the instrumental shifts and taking it in as one would a novel, weighing the whole on the sum of its criteria. Then, there’s the kind of person who listens to songs with their heart, engaging in their fictions and identifying with them whether they like it or not, and occasionally tattooing a lyric or two in their mind as accidental but true life tenets.

It is difficult to imagine either sort not finding something to love in “Constructive Summer”; it’s easy to think that either one might get completely tangled up in the trainwreck of “Magazines.” This music – this record, a lasting momento of 2008 – is as palatable as it is completely uncomfortable. It’s for this reason that our dear Alice fell down the rabbit hole that was the past year’s worth of merriment, whiskey, and veritable shitshows; it is for this reason that she fell right into the Hold Steady back catalog and found it an acceptable place to stay.

I started last year hating a band; I ended the year with their latest album on my top ten list, one of their shows under my belt, and their back catalog in regular rotation on my mp3 player. If I learned anything in the last year, it’s that sometimes the things that make you the most uncomfortable are also the things you love the most.

~ by 365holdsteady on January 20, 2009.