- The Hold Steady are back with Open Door Policy, their eighth album of classic rock tunes exploring the seedy underbelly of the “sex, drugs and rock’n’roll” dream.
Coinciding with the new album, the band are also staging a couple of concerts they are calling The Weekender. Performed at the Brooklyn Bowl in New York, but livestreamed and timed to be conveniently viewable in Europe and the UK, you can get tickets to watch a video of the band rocking out from your own loungeroom for $US20 a night, or $45 for VIP “soundcheck” access. Combine this with specially made merchandise for the event, and the collector’s edition blue vinyl copies of the new album, and you get the sneaking suspicion that The Hold Steady are now a firmly established part of the dad-rock world they once paid tongue-in-cheek tribute to.
The lyrical in-jokes that once referenced the quirks of the underground punk scene now seem more likely to reflect The Hold Steady’s own back catalogue, with lyrical nods to their past strewn through Open Door Policy. Of course, there are still some funny forays into rock history - like the rehab nurse who has Van Halen’s Eruption as a ringtone, “blasting out through built-in speakers like it’s bug spray”.
That song, lead single Family Farm, is vintage Hold Steady - with its catchy horn and piano riff, and a story of life pushed to excess full of witty one-liners and religious allusions. There are certainly still enough of those characteristics elsewhere on the album for an enjoyable listen. At times though it more resembles one of singer Craig Finn’s solo albums, musically restrained and full of desperate characters whose drug habits are more likely to be prescription anti-depressants than kids chasing the lure of impossible highs. “I no longer see the romance in these ghosts”, sings one character; “the records didn’t move us like they used to make us move” says another.
There were always a few regrets in a typical Hold Steady tale, but they were balanced by the heady optimism of young dreamers embarking on physical or astral journeys, and delivered in joyous Springsteen-style bombast. It’s notable on Open Door Policy the lack of epic opening and closing tracks of the type that characterised the first few albums.
Not that every album following a set formula is necessarily a virtue, but you wouldn’t say Open Door Policy is breaking any new ground either. By this stage The Hold Steady know their audience, and have created another record with enough cheesy licks and witty tales of debauchery to keep them happy. A tried and true formula aimed at the faithful, singing songs of epic highs and massive nights but finishing early enough that everyone can get home to pay the babysitter. For better or worse, The Hold Steady seem to have joined the ranks of the classic rock bands they’ve always sung about.
- Andy Paine.