I am totally feeling "Stay Positive" by The Hold Steady with every inch of my being. This is a damn near perfect classic rock album. All the usual Hold Steady musical touchstones are there, the piano, the solos, the anthemic choruses. What is new is the addition of more horns, and a talkbox at the end of "Joke About Jamaica". None of the new tricks take away from the overall power of the album, which seems a bit more downbeat than the previous three. My only gripe when I first picked it up was that Holly, Gideon and Charlemagne were not referenced but once. But then I read an interview with Craig Finn, who claimed that he deliberately left out names to make the songs more ambiguous. I thought that was a very interesting way of writing, seeing as how the Steady's songs play more like mini novels than conventional pop songs.
After multiple spins "Stay Positive" is probably going to be album of the year when my rundown comes out in December (the only major competition so far being the new My Morning Jacket). We still have Kings of Leon in September, so who knows? It may be a repeat of 2005 when "Separation Sunday" and "Aha Shake Heartbreak" topped the list.
As for other new discs, I am feeling the new Beck after the second listen. After listen number 1, I didn't get into it. My reasoning was that I listened to it on my iPod, and Danger Mouse's overwhelming Space Invaders meets Hanna Barbera production killed the thing for me. Listening to it on the old Hi-Fi allowed the bloops and blips to blend into the songs, and it was overall a better experience. "Gamma Ray" and "Youthless" are the tracks that I feel the most.
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