The recipe for The Hold Steady Album Review Cocktail: three parts alcohol of choice, two parts ’70s rock and roll, string together your favorite Craig Finn lyrics, shake well, top off with a reference to Bruce Springsteen. It’s a tried-and-true formula for critics, one that’s almost as dependable as The Hold Steady’s alcohol-soaked bar-rock, which has only satisfied over the course of four albums and countless fist-pumping concerts.
When news broke last year that the Brooklyn band was recording a new album, fans knew just what to expect: punk-infused classic-rock anthems that resist the current status quo of typical indie-rock, resulting in three-minute records that taught me more than I ever learned in school. The songs are all the more impressive for the fact that the band has yet to fall into the kitschy classic-rock pastiche currently occupied by Bon Jovi and, sadly, Bruce Springsteen.
In January, the unthinkable happened: Eccentric keyboardist Franz Nicolay left the band, citing artistic differences for his departure. It was his E-Street Band style keyboard flourishes that provided the perfect counter-melodies to accompany Tad Kubler’s angular guitar-riffs and lead singer Craig Finn’s speak-sing vocal stylings, and the thought of his absence seemed like a detrimental blow to the band. The chances of them making another fantastic rock and roll record was thrown into question.
With the band’s fifth album, “Heaven is Whenever,” the loss of Nicolay has done the opposite of what I feared. Instead of stifling the band’s songs, his absence has opened them up and given the band the opportunity to fill up those empty spaces with some creative growth. Kubler’s guitar is still front-and-center, but he’s now armed with an arsenal of effects that provide equal parts atmosphere and momentum. Finn’s singing is smoother than ever thanks to some vocal lessons, but he’s still too weird for mainstream rock radio.
Not surprisingly, the keyboards on this album aren’t foregrounded like on previous albums. Instead, the band is providing backing-vocal harmonies on every track, making this the softest and warmest-sounding The Hold Steady record yet.
“Heaven is Whenever” still has some of The Hold Steady’s signature anthems, especially the power-pop jam “Hurricane J” and tongue-in-cheek “Rock Problems.” Thankfully, on more than one track the band stretches some of their rock-and-roll vocabulary outside some of its typical influences.
While a The Hold Steady album’s opening track has always hits the ground running, “The Sweet Part of the City” begins with a bluesy lick on a slide guitar that’s more reminiscent of “Exile on Main Street”-era Rolling Stones than “Born to Run”-era Springsteen. The backing vocals on “Our Whole Lives” have a sunny bounce lifted straight from the early Beach Boys records. The band even found room for a clarinet solo at the end of “Barely Breathing,” a two-step stomp that ends with a playful call-and-response.
Every The Hold Steady fan knows to expect greatness from the closing track of each album, as the band saved the best track for last on three of its first four records.
This time, while “A Slight Discomfort” doesn’t quite reach the heights of “Killer Parties” or “How A Resurrection Really Feels,” the moody atmosphere and cathartic tension-and-release provide the perfect template to highlight the unsung rhythm section of the band, bassist Galen Polivka and drummer Bobby Drake.
The album’s best track is “The Weekenders,” a thematic follow-up to their 2006 single “Chips Ahoy!” The song is built around one of the most melodic choruses the band has ever written and features one of the freshest lyrics on the whole album: “She said the theme of this party is the industrial age / and you came in dressed like a train wreck.”
The most important lyric on the album, however, is the very same one that lends itself to the album’s title. On the slow-burning “We Can Get Together,” Finn sings about finding so much joy in the simple act of listening to music with somebody: “Heaven is whenever we can get together / sit down on your floor and listen to your records.” I think he’s probably right.
E-mail Robinson at crobinson@media.ucla.edu.