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The Hold Steady: Pulling Even With The Shark?

Posted at 7:18 AM on October 2, 2006 by Hans Eisenbeis (1 Comments)

The Hold Steady, MPR Photo
It's official: the Hold Steady have arrived in the national limelight. The best Minneapolis band that lives in Brooklyn got their close-up in the New York Times yesterday, where Kalefa Sanneh avers that Craig Finn and his colleagues are America's bar band, an important post long since abandoned by Bruce Springsteen. While we have our doubts about the accompanying photographs (uh, we've been to WInnepeg and there aren't any snow-capped mountains in all of Manitoba; we doubt there's even a hill), the piece concludes on a beautiful note that conjurs the ghost of Jack Kerouac:
The album ends with “Southtown Girls,” a tribute both to Cheap Trick’s “Southern Girls” and to a Twin Cities species slightly less exotic than its name: “Southtown Girls” are the type one might find at the Southtown Shopping Center in Bloomington, Minn.; it is, Mr. Finn is proud to note, “a really lame mall.” Yet the song has a great, swaggering guitar riff, and a refrain that balances sweetness and sarcasm: “Southtown girls won’t blow you away/But you know that they’ll stay.” So maybe the song is also about how even the most mundane place can seem exciting, if you sing about it right. After the first chorus Mr. Finn reels off some whimsical directions. “Take Lyndale to the horizon,” he sings. “Take Nicollet out to the ocean.” And that’s the Hold Steady’s hometown: a singular city that goes on forever.

OK. So when will Craig sing about Southdale girls?


  • Earlier: Idolator accuses Pitchfork of loving the Hold Steady too much.

  • Even earlier, funnier: Separated at Birth--Craig Finn and Peter Sellers?

    Photo MPR

    Comments (1)

    As far as the New York Times goes,I have two words:Judith Miller.

    Posted by Barry | October 2, 2006 8:06 AM

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