Artist The Hold Steady

Marina Chavez

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The Hold Steady

It’s time to stop calling The Hold Steady a bar band, and not just because the Brooklyn-based band is too big to play bars anymore. More importantly, The Hold Steady’s sound has grown so lush and complex that all those Springsteen comparisons are starting to make sense, and it’s hard to think of a bar in the world where musicians would be comfortable swapping an accordion for, say, a clavinet. The group’s latest album, last year’s Stay Positive, maintains singer Craig Finn’s evocative lyrics and gruff, spoken-word delivery, but finds the band—and particularly keyboardist Franz Nicolay—varying its arrangements in some unusual and ambitious ways. The Hold Steady plays here behind a new live album, A Positive Rage, that also comes packaged with a tour-film DVD.

Updated 05/28/2009