The Elegant Variation: Hold 'er Steady

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March 06, 2007

Hold 'er Steady

The Hold Steady tours for Boys and Girls in America. Sloppy drunken fools haven't been this much fun or this literate since Dylan Thomas. Appropriately, as the band is poet laurette for hangovers, loserdom, addiction, stagnation, and one-hitters, the tour seems to include only college towns.

Seriously, this album deserved every accolade it received from every top-ten list last year. Some choice bits:

Some times the pain killers make the pain even worse.

How'm I s'pose to know you're high if you won't let me touch you/How'm I s'pose to know you're high if you won't even dance?

She's hard on the heart but soft to the touch/She gets migraine headaches if she does it too much/She always does it too much

Ordinarily nasty-drunk lyrics don't do a thing for me. I have a couple of beers from time to time, but ... The Hold Steady? They have a song ("First Night") in which the main character is "inconsolable, unhinged and uncontrollable" because she can't get as high as she did the first time -- and it brings tears to my eyes. That's crazy. We're not talking, you know, Valentino Achak Deng's story here. I don't know, I can't explain it. My favorite bit from the album:

Started recreational/Ended kinda medical//Started in a vestibule/Ended in a hospital

Posted at 09:21 PM in Guest Bloggers | Permalink

Comments

This shameless ploy to attract the attention of litbloggers who are ALSO Hold Steady fans will not work, sir! And you're misquoting the song. It's WE, not she. And Holly is reacting because "she cried when she told us about Jesus," meaning that her seduction was proselytizing. Religious experiences, as we all know, are often described as "a high." Please consider the nuances of Mr. Finn's lyrics. As you yourself attest, there's a lot more going on than mere literalism.

Posted by: ed | March 07, 2007 at 12:17 AM

No ploy, Ed. Appreciation. And I'm not misquoting the song because I deliberately did not put the "me" in quotations. The religious undertones of the song, carried over from Separaration Sunday, don't detract from the, yes, literal fact that Holly's in the hospital from what is likely an overdose in her search to reclaim the peace of her first high ("On that first night, she slept like she'd never been scared"). That "she said words alone never could save us" and that she "cried and she told us about Jesus" (correcting your misquote above) is not the likely reason she's in the hospital, though it certainly adds to my love of the character, my addiction to the song, and my appreciation of Mr. Finn.

Posted by: Josh | March 07, 2007 at 05:19 AM

For the record, I appreciated the post. I only found The Hold Steady a few weeks ago and have been trying to figure out whether they might actually be as good as I feel they are. It seems that they are. After a friend told me "[Finn's] the new Springsteen" I was wary. (I can't stand Bruce.) But I think you're right, Josh. The Hold Steady seems literate and fresh and can tell a story with the best of 'em.

Posted by: ajg | March 07, 2007 at 08:36 AM

Ugh, you guys CAN'T be serious! This album is the dregs. THE DREGS. And I don't take much pleasure in dregs. Okay, the lyrics are good. But the music? Barenaked Ladies plus a whole lot of blah. That's all I'm saying.

Okay, that last bit's a lie: If you want good lyrics AND music, go get the new The Arcade Fire album. It's unbelievable.

Now I'm done.

Posted by: marri | March 07, 2007 at 10:52 AM

Definitely not the Hold Steady's best album but far from the dregs. If you truly want to experience what THS is about, you have to see them live. They've picked up where Guided by Voices left off as far as the live show goes. Not even the Arcade Fire, with all of their energy, can come close to Finn & the boys when it comes to dynamic stage presence (and drinking).

Posted by: Jeff | March 07, 2007 at 11:13 AM

I have the same reaction to the Hold Steady: namely, that the events and characters depicted by Finn are so far outside of my normal experience that I can't believe they hold as much meaning for me as they do.

As for the Barenaked Ladies comparison, that is nothing but slander -- not only because the Barenaked Ladies are mostly awful, but because the Hold Steady don't sound even remotely like them.

The new Arcade Fire is very good, but not in the same way as tHS, so the comparison is not a very productive one.

Posted by: Ted | March 07, 2007 at 01:46 PM

seeing the hold steady (on Mar 17) was the best live show I have ever seen. and I've seen many. I was a fan of THS before but seeing them made me a diehard fan.

Posted by: Betty | March 21, 2007 at 12:15 PM

Barenaked Ladies??? You've got to be kidding me. There are a thousand different musical influences you can hear in the Hold Steady, and the Ladies are not one of them. The only lyricist who challenges Finn as the best around right now is John Darnielle of the Mountain Goats.

Posted by: JMW | May 02, 2007 at 07:10 AM

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The Elegant Variation is "Fowler’s (1926, 1965) term for the inept writer’s overstrained efforts at freshness or vividness of expression. Prose guilty of elegant variation calls attention to itself and doesn’t permit its ideas to seem naturally clear. It typically seeks fancy new words for familiar things, and it scrambles for synonyms in order to avoid at all costs repeating a word, even though repetition might be the natural, normal thing to do: The audience had a certain bovine placidity, instead of The audience was as placid as cows. Elegant variation is often the rock, and a stereotype, a cliché, or a tired metaphor the hard place between which inexperienced or foolish writers come to grief. The familiar middle ground in treating these homely topics is almost always the safest. In untrained or unrestrained hands, a thesaurus can be dangerous."

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The Elegant Variation

A Literary Weblog.
A Guardian Top 10 Literary Blog * A Forbes "Best of the Web" Pick * A Los Angeles Magazine Top Los Angeles Blog
"Really brave ... or really stupid" - NPR

March 06, 2007

Hold 'er Steady

Comments

MY NOVEL

WORTHY READINGS

TEV DEFINED

RECOMMENDED

THIS GUN FOR HIRE:
Reviews & Criticism

SECOND LOOK

Categories

The Elegant Variation

A Literary Weblog. A Guardian Top 10 Literary Blog * A Forbes "Best of the Web" Pick * A Los Angeles Magazine Top Los Angeles Blog "Really brave ... or really stupid" - NPR

March 06, 2007

Hold 'er Steady

Comments

MY NOVEL

WORTHY READINGS

TEV DEFINED

RECOMMENDED

THIS GUN FOR HIRE: Reviews & Criticism

SECOND LOOK

Categories

A Literary Weblog.
A Guardian Top 10 Literary Blog * A Forbes "Best of the Web" Pick * A Los Angeles Magazine Top Los Angeles Blog
"Really brave ... or really stupid" - NPR

THIS GUN FOR HIRE:
Reviews & Criticism