Extreme Listening Mode!

‘It’s cool to do these shows’ muses frontman Craig Finn. ‘We’ve been out on tour supporting Counting Crows and that’s been great. But it’s really nice to play in front of…’ he pauses and thinks for the most appropriate term ‘…your own people.’

That this literate, ambitious barroom band inspire such devotion among their fanbase will come as no surprise to anyone who has ever heard their four albums. Songs of characters so finely nuanced they could have stepped out of a Don DeLillo novel set to storming rock songs in thrall to classic sounds of Springsteen, Zeppelin and AC/DC but also nodding to the band members roots in the Positive Noise hardcore scene of Minneapolis which gave us Húsker Dú and the Replacements.

The gig kicks off early by modern standards (8.20) and with people still coming in, openers ‘Hornets! Hornets!’ and ‘Navy Sheets’ don’t really take off. The midweek crowd are reserved, and sometimes a band need the energy from the fans to catapult the setlist out of the ordinary. Credit to the band though; pulling out a group of storming songs from their last two albums ratchets it up a notch. ‘Party Pit’ and ‘You Can Make Him Like You’ get the momentum going before ‘Sequestered in Memphis’ and ‘Constructive Summer’ consolidate it. After this, there’s no looking back.

This is, of course, a small date announced in the middle of a support tour, so the assembled crowd contain a few diehards, who are rewarded by a mid-set clutch of songs from their classic ‘Separation Sunday’. ‘Banging Camp’ and ‘Multitude of Casualties’ are intense, cathartic songs full of twisted energy and provide an almost lysergic, multi-coloured thrill. Their anthemic credentials are enhanced with a storming ‘Stay Positive’, which is surely as an apt a song for our current times as any (short of someone bringing out a track called ‘We’re All Fucked’, but I digress) and it rattles around at about twice the pace it does on record.

Fan favourites ‘Your Little Hoodrat Friend’ and the woozy party diary of ‘Massive Nights’ bring the night to a fairly rapturous denoument, but it’s closer ‘Killer Parties’, with it’s post-celebratory explosions of noise and regret, which really ends things appropriately. ‘I know where I want these characters to end up’ Finn muses afterwards ‘I’m just not sure how they are going to get there. That’s what keeps it interesting.’

And that’s what keeps The Hold Steady interesting; they are, uniquely, as interested in the hangover as they are the drinking, the comedown as much as the high. In embracing and subverting rock’n'roll tradition and cliché, they’ve actually remembered and reminded how great it can be in it’s simplest, purest form. there is nothing more exciting than a rock band in full flight, at the top of their game and believing in everything that they do. It’s that conviction which raises the Hold Steady from the simply superb to the sublime. Tonight, in a packed sweaty club full of disciples, they’ve proved it again.

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