If you've ever found yourself wondering, "Why is Sarah and Ben's music blog called 'Skeptic at First'?" this is the post for you. You probably weren't, but it's from a Hold Steady song, "Yeah Sapphire." The full line is, "I was a skeptic at first, but these miracles work." It's the vamp at the end, and it was also my senior quote. It's the first thing I came up with when Ben asked what our blog should be called, and he wrote it down without question, even though he's not a huge fan of the Hold Steady.
It seems to me like the Hold Steady is a band about which some people are somewhat ambivalent and others are intensely passionate. I am one of the latter. I get why you might not like them, and I don't blame you. Craig Finn's voice is pretty rough, and a lot of the lyrics are about drugs and alcohol and sex. It's harder rock than I usually listen to. I respect all of these things, but I love the Hold Steady. I love, love, love the Hold Steady.
I can listen to their most recent two albums, Boys and Girls in America and Stay Positive, over and over. (I don't like their two older albums as much so I won't focus on them, although there are some great cuts on there, and I know people who would say this is blasphemy.) Craig Finn's voice is rough, yes, but it's honest, and it blends like another electric guitar into the music. The keyboards are perfect - although not anymore because their keyboardist quit, but it's okay. The lyrics sanctify ordinary people in ordinary places, doing ordinary things. They recognize the terrifying crazed beauty of life that everyone feels.
I've seen them live twice and each time they put on fantastic, energetic, tight, loving shows. And each time, at the end, Craig Finn told the audience - I cannot remember what exactly he said leading up to this, so if you want to know you should go to a show, drive to go see them in another state because it's worth it - he told us, "There is such joy in what we do up here." He said it, each time, with the same simplicity and helplessness with which you say, "I love you," to someone for whom you feel something so enormous it is inexpressible in any language.
The song I'm putting up is a single from the Hold Steady's new album, Heaven is Whenever, out May 4th. I will be buying it and I think you should too. The song is called "Hurricane J," and it's actually one of the most pop-oriented of their songs, but the lyrics, as every other music blog I've read about this song in says, are classic Hold Steady. The line those blogs point to is, "You're a beautiful girl, and you're a pretty good waitress." But I'm going to point to others.
"I don't want this to stop
I want you to know
I don't want you to settle
I want you to go
Forget all the things that I showed you this summer
You're too hard already, you'll only get harder."
If you don't like this, don't worry about it. But if you feel that sense of wonder creeping over you after the guitars burst into the chorus, and find yourself listening to it again, and again, go buy their albums. Spend some money on these guys. They spend their lives pouring out these ordinary stories in clubs all over the country in loud desperate voices. I want to help them any way I can.
