"Hurricane J" by the Hold Steady
Andrew
This one's bittersweet for me. When I heard "Hurricane J" in May of last year, I was ecstatic. The first single off Heaven is Whenever sounded like vintage Hold Steady: driving guitars, sing-a-long choruses, brilliant, boozy lyrics about waitresses. Classic. The absence of mustachioed piano-man Franz Nicolay seemed like a boon, not a hindrance. The song hurtled and thrummed, guitars and drums roaring forth, then reigning in, then roaring forth again.
And then the album came out and took a dump in my heart.
The progression that the Hold Steady made in the first decade of the 21st century was, in my humble opinion, one of the most exciting builds in the history of music. Each album they released was unmistakably Hold Steady while also unmistakably stronger than the previous album. Craig Finn and Tad Kubler are (or were, we'll see) baby/bathwater specialists, if you will*. While a lay-fan may listen to Boys and Girls in America and Stay Positive and hear the same music, I hear a band taking tried and true formulas and tweaking them ever-so-slightly to move closer to perfection. And while, Heaven is Whenever doesn't fit into this progression for me, "Hurricane J" does. The lack of a prominent piano part lends focus and drive to the song. The guitars blister a little harder, Craig Finn cares a little more. The song has no extraneous parts. It sounds like the Hold Steady but also sounds like a possible future Hold Steady.
And then there's Finn's poetry. Who else could take a line like, "I don't want you to settle/I want you to grow," and make you not laugh at it? Finn's lyrics about late night liaisons, drunken nights, and drugged neo-saints feel simultaneously literary and anthemic, and laid atop Tad Kubler's monster-guitar riffs, they fucking kill.
But they didn't name her for a saint/
They named her for a storm./
So how's she supposed to think about/
How it's gonna feel in the morning?
Fuck yes.
*You won't? Ok, no problem.
Seth
Hey Andrew, welcome back! Glad you survived your ordeal so we can get back to doing the important work of sifting through 2010's indie wreckage. So...
Agreed on almost all points. The Hold Steady win the 2010 award for "Favorite Band Who Released an Album That I Don't Love." While I realize that's a pretty silly distinction, Heaven Is Whenever was pretty much a step backwards on every front for the Brooklyn-based barroom laureates. Seeing the band twice on the tour and spending more time with the record has opened it up for me a bit and there are some good songs on it ("Rock Problems" and "The Weekenders," notably) but "Hurricane J" is the only one that hits the rarefied heights where all of their preceding records dwelt.
"Hurricane J" finds the Hold Steady doing what they do best: a guitar blitzkrieg, no-holds-barred romp with Craig Finn's speak-shouted, Raymond Carver-esque ruminations on young Americans dealing with life and falling in love taking center stage. The song's narrator is in a typically Finn-y predicament, deeply in love with a much younger woman with whom he realizes there's not a future. The level of bathos Finn summons on the line that ends the first stanza--"Jessie, I don't think I'm the guy"--is as crushing as anything the band has ever recorded. Andrew, your observation that nobody else could make a line like "I don't want you to settle/I want you to grow," work like Craig Finn is spot-on. He writes with such literary acumen that you can practically see his narrator streaking his cheeks with tears as he reluctantly breaks things off with his young paramour, offering this last advice. It's one of the few moments on the record with such intensity.
I love the Hold Steady with a white-hot passion, but I wouldn't fault anybody for not digging them. Finn and his gang write songs for a certain kind of hopeless romantic who drinks and reads too much for his (I find HS fans tend to be guys, my sister excepted) own good. I've aspired to live the life described in these songs for most of my post-adolescence now, so I realize I've got a lot more emotional investment than most people do in this stuff, and I hope that the band finds a way to continue to live up to the heights they've hit before sans Franz Nicolay. I'll settle for even one more song like this one, though.
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