The Hold Steady

Trade secrets

27 Nov 2008

Five months before Margaret Thatcher’s landslide 1979 victory, and with Britain’s city streets still retaining the air of a depressed bombsite, highbrow arts programme The South Bank Show appeared to have been hi-jacked by a cell of musical terrorists.

Singles & Downloads

16 Oct 2008

The challenge for The View is to avoid ‘doing a Fratellis’, i.e. delivering an underwhelming second album thereby massaging the feeling that all your early promise was based on one good song. Sad to say, the rowdy but slight jangle of ‘5 Rebbeccas…

Singles & Downloads

3 Jul 2008

Why is there so much slickly produced, pretend-to-be-credible pop around these days? Newton Faulkner, Amy MacDonald, The Hoosiers, Sara Bareilles – the insipid list just keeps on getting longer. Eurgh, and here’s another one; the emotionless and utterly…

The Hold Steady - Stay Positive

3 Jul 2008

ROCK (Rough Trade) If ever a band suited a time, a place and a mood then it is The Hold Steady. Their innate ability to capture that great moment on a warm summer Friday night when everything comes together and things are just... right. For four…

The Hold Steady

14 Feb 2008

Craig Finn is very much like the Millennium Falcon: he might not look like much, but he’s got it where it counts. For The Hold Steady’s frontman, lyricist and live ringleader may look like he could repair your broken PC or survey your house for woodworm…

Singles & Downloads

18 Jun 2007

(Photo: Cherry Ghost) After the sugar-rush, bubblegum-pop of ‘Girlfriend’, the dreary ballad that is Avril Lavigne ’s ‘When You’re Gone’ (Columbia, 1 Star) is blandness personified. Andrea Corr ’s ‘Shame On You’ (Atlantic, 1 Star) meanwhile isn’t as…

Also Released

Album

21 May 2007

The Hold Steady Separation Sunday/Almost Killed Me The band who have produced the best album of 2007 so far finally get their first two albums issued here, the first of which, Separation Sunday, is arguably better than their latest, Girls and Boys of…

Hold Steady, The

How swoon is now

29 Jan 2007

As timely dates go, The Hold Steady stomping their way through their set on Valentine’s Day is about as apposite as you can get.

Hold Steady, The - album review

The Hold Steady

3 Jan 2007

ROCK’N’ROLL Sometimes, a band provides one of those kind of songs that always stay in your heart and record collection forever. The Hold Steady have an old song of theirs called ‘Your Little Hoodrat Friend’, a throttling, acerbic bombast of a rock…

Autumn music special - your new favourite bands

18 Sep 2006

Dot to Dot sound like the bastard sons of Orange Juice and Lloyd Cole and their aim seems to be to get you dancing. They like their jangle, and they sometimes shamble, but their shows are always worth catching, and with their debut single, ‘Dusty…