Show Preview: The Hold Steady at Emo's

The Hold Steady have been holding, er, steady in the limelight since 2004, picking up a Village Voice cover here and a best album of the year there (2006: The Onion’s A.V. Club), and just generally best-ing all over the place: they were Blender’s 2006 Band of the Year and made it to Rolling Stone’s annual album ranker at number 8. Critical acclaim blah blah blah.

The big hit from the big album Boys and Girls in America is called “Stuck Between Stations,” a little ditty that will transport you to a midwestern pool hall where you’d swear you were listening to Bruce Springsteen’s “Thunder Road” instead of these (mostly) Minneapolis natives. Okay – so the Springsteen comparison has been made before, but not without significant cause. The Hold Steady’s Craig Finn continues in the narrative tradition and the (somewhat difficult) vocal stylings of The Boss. And yes, of course, The Hold Steady rounds out their epic rock n roll sound with a very E Street Band piano. If only they wore jeans to accentuate their ~~sweet American behinds~~ musical abilities. It seems these guys are totally into being Americans, which we think is refreshing; to illustrate, they have recently recorded a version of “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” that will be played a Minnesota Twins game. If that weren’t enough, the Boys and Girls album name was taken from Jack Kerouac's On The Road, and they were inspired to start the band after watching The Last Waltz, the legendary Scorsese documentary and last performance of The Band.