Gonna start it with a positive jam

*Ed Note: The below review of The Hold Steady comes to us courtesy of guest blogger (and full-time lover) Perry Ellis.

It’s hard to describe The Hold Steady‘s sound until you’ve heard it—it’s as if Bruce Springsteen, Thin Lizzy, Hüsker Dü, The Replacements and “Bear Mountain Picnic”-era Bob Dylan had a free-for-all orgy in a dark room somewhere and one f ’em got knocked up.

The band lyrics drive its unique sound—lead singer and sometime rhythm guitarist Craig Finn has a raspy, reedy delivery he’s described as “conversational”—it’s a combination of spoken-word rap, conventional singing and the hoarse, caterwauling epiphany of a drunken bar band shouter high on the beer and the noise.

What sucked me in is the sound of Tad Kubler’s guitar. Take the opening chords of 2006’s “Boys and Girls in America”—a simple, slightly fuzzed-out riff (pour equal parts 70s rock god, old school punk and Springsteen swagger over ice. Shake. Serve)—and you’ve got the recipe for the rest of the album. It makes for an exuberant, optimistic, at times oddly graceful cocktail.

As a whole the band is versatile, combining that exhilarating guitar work with swinging, sometimes sultry piano grooves (props to beret-sportin’ keyboards man Franz Nicolay for the ebony-and-ivory work but mostly for the killer ‘stache) and a driving, workmanlike rhythm section. They have lots of range to boot—compare the piano ballad “First Night” with the chugging, sprightly “You Can Make Him Like You.”

And Finn’s lyrics—intricate, detailed chronicles of teenaged Midwest wastrels searching for booze, drugs and the meaning of life—are just goddamned fun to listen to, especially if you came up in the East Coast equivalent of the Minnesotan suburbia he limns, er, describes (sorry Pax, couldn’t resist.)

If you’ve never been a shitfaced teenager in a mall, gotten drunk as a poet on payday drinking cheap keg beer in the woods or made a pipe out of a Pringles can you probably won’t get much out his stuff. But if you have, you’ll recognize every word:

“I was a teenage ice machine. I kept it cool in coolers. I drank until I dreamed. When I dreamed I always dreamed about the scene. All these kids look like little lambs looking up at me. I was a twin cities trash bin. I did everything they’d give me. I’d jam it in my system.”

Finn’s got a gift for clever turns of phrase, too (I like this nugget from “You Can Make Him Like You:” “They say you don’t have a problem until you start to do it alone / They say you don’t have a problem until you start bringing it home / They say you don’t have a problem until you start sleeping alone”), and liberally sprinkles references ranging from Jack Kerouac (“Boys and Girls in America” derives its title from “On the Road“) and poet John Berryman to indie-rock contemporaries The Mountain Goats. I can see how this kind of referential (and self-referential) crap could be off-putting, but I like it.

The excellence of “Boys and Girls in America” prompted me to snap up The Hold Steady’s first two albums, “Almost Killed Me” and “Separation Sunday,” and both delivered. “Almost Killed Me,” apart from yielding one of the sweetest T-shirts I’ve ever owned, reveals Finn’s propensity for recurrent themes and characters. The Holly of “First Night” makes her initial appearance bearing “hazardous chemicals” on this album, Charlemagne is introduced toting that Pringles pipe and Gideon first gets jumped into a street gang.

Those three form the core players of “Separation Sunday,” a concept album that traces their search for meaning and redemption through religion. It’s pretty good, but for me doesn’t have the appeal of the debut or of “Boys and Girls,” mostly because the lyrics are so dense and I’m not geeky enough to spend hours poring over lyrics.

But I’ll spend any amount of time listening to “Boys and Girls,” reveling in the band’s dynamism and Finn’s deft, evocative writing. They’ve put out an album in each of the lat three years, and if we’re lucky they’re in the studio right now, polishing the next one.