Separation Sunday — The Hold Steady
French Kiss
2005
Rating:


The Hold Steady could be one of the all-time great anthemic arena rockers if not for two immediately obvious hurdles. First, The Hold Steady didn't break through (and that's using the term lightly considering its strictly indie status) until last year's "Almost Killed Me," distancing the band by two-and-a-half decades from apparent idols Bruce Springsteen, AC/DC, Boston, Thin Izzy and Billy Joel. The second and more detrimental problem is that lead singer Craig Finn can't sing. This isn't always an obstacle — Bob Dylan and Tom Waits aren't their generation's best crooners, but they at least try to carry a tune, something Finn does not. He hoots and hollers and screams and shouts. His vocal incapabilities were a bigger obstacle on "Almost Killed Me," which often sounded like the original songs of a bar band that's generally ignored by a drunken college crowd.

This time around Finn's growl is directed at those young bacchanalians on "Separation Sunday," his "Quadrophenia" for hoodrat girls and skater boys. His lyrics, thanks to that tone-deaf yelp, sound like the musings of a barroom philosopher with a story to tell that might just redeem all the "Kids," or at least make them all right. Like "Trainspotting," Finn can't help but make his scene of drugs, sex, alcohol and rock and roll seem like a rollicking good time ("You came into the ER drinking gin from a jam jar / And the nurse is making jokes about the ER being like an after-bar," from "Stevie Nix"), but by the end, Finn not only chooses life, he chooses Jesus.

"Separation Sunday" follows the misadventures of characters with names like Hallelujah and Charlemagne, reprobates all who find spirituality in unexpected ways, whether it's through admiring how a cross pendant "looks on her chest with three open buttons" ("Cattle and the Creeping Things") or being baptized by a man with a nitrous tank ("Banging Camp") or attending the youth services that "always find a way to get their bloody cross into your druggy little messed up life" ("Multitude of Casualties"). These are the kind of characters who have to concentrate not to fall in love when they kiss and who abstain from sex because they're saving themselves "for the scene." They're also the kind of characters who are eagerly awaiting their own "Rent"-style, schmaltz-free Broadway musical.

If it weren't for the band, Finn would be nothing more than that drunken philosopher, albeit an interesting one. Tad Kubler has the Thin Lizzy riffs and bassist Galan Poliuka holds things as steady as an E Street shuffle with drummer Bobby Drake. New edition Franz Nicolacy pounds out power chords on his Hammond organ to give the songs a much needed emotional heft.

By the time Finn and Hallelujah describe "How a Resurrection Really Feels," The Hold Steady's messy menagerie of hoods and hoodrats find salvation, and if "Separation Sunday" isn't quite that transcendent, it at least makes being born again seem possible for even the worst of sinners.

Posted Sunday, May 22, 2005

Link to this review:
http://filmzeus.pressbin.com/music/the.hold.steady/separation.sunday