I Talk About the Hold Steady All Day, Every Day

My friend Sarah just started a blog on which she'll attempt to suss out her feelings on the Hold Steady, a band she'd hated forever, but has recently come to like. Sort of. 

She brings up an interesting point in her second post, about how all the women in the songs on their new record, Stay Positive, are sorta fucked,  or as she puts it, "broken." This is something I thought critics were going to bring up a lot more with this record, because I do think there's something to it. I said this in my review, though, and I do stand by it, I think -- the girls are all messed up, for sure, and I was troubled by it at first, but I'm not sure how mad I can get, because, really, everyone is messed up. And for the most part, I think the boys come out looking even worse than the women, even if only by virtue of the fact that they continue to chase them. Like the woman in "Magazines," for instance--I think she comes off looking great. She parties a lot, gets drunk, seems like she might have some money, has dudes lining up to date her... I don't know. She seems kinda powerful--she's fucked, of course, but you'll be hard-pressed to find a Hold Steady character who's not fucked in some way. 

I was telling Sarah she should give Separation Sunday a chance too, because I think one of the most appealing things about the Hold Steady are the recurring characters (Holly, Gideon, Charlemagne, etc.) and the constant references to other songs, both their own and other bands', and that record is overflowing with all of that stuff. It's like a test--a way to congratulate yourself for being cool enough to recognize rock-nerd references wherever they pop up. It's stupid, obviously, but I think it's the same kind of thing that's happening with Girl Talk. For me, that's really all he's good for: providing a setting for a bunch of people to congratulate each other for having the same set of pop-culture reference points. I think the Hold Steady fulfills that same urge.