The Hold Steady and Jaill at Riverside Theater
CJ Foeckler
Craig Finn fancies himself the bard of killer parties and massive nights, which made his band, The Hold Steady, an inspired choice to headline Riverside Theater’s annual New Year’s Eve show. Since pretending to be Finn became a favorite sport for rock geeks in 2010, here’s a stab at how he might have summed up the night: “Came onstage dressed like Mr. White / or maybe one of those movies with lots of kung fu fighting / Yeah, we’re comin’ out, like track three on Let It Be / even after that guy fell from the balcony.”
Aside from the fan who took a frightening tumble from the second to the first floor of the Riverside—he was carted away by paramedics with apparent movement in his arms and legs—Finn and company left audience members satisfied with about two hours of guitar-heavy odes to beer and drug-addled nostalgia. It was a fitting soundtrack for a night devoted to looking back on the previous year, from a band still in the process of reconfiguring itself after the departure of pivotal member Franz Nicolay.
The Hold Steady seemed hamstrung without Nicolay last July when it performed at Summerfest, particularly for fans accustomed to the charismatically eccentric keyboardist acting as an onstage foil to the excitable Finn. His absence left a considerable hole in the band, leaving Finn to carry the weight of the stage presence amid the more stoic likes of guitarist Tad Kubler and bassist Galen Polivka. Since the Summerfest show, The Hold Steady has gained confidence in its new incarnation as a three-guitar band bolstered by touring ax-slinger Steve Selvidge, fully embracing the overblown arena-rock bombast of the Hold Steady sound that was tempered somewhat on 2010’s slick Heaven Is Whenever.
While The Hold Steady is now even less subtle than before, it can still deliver the goods in a party-hearty setting. Striding onstage in a dapper (though appropriately rumpled) black and white suit, Finn was his usual energetic self on New Year’s Eve, frequently leaping to the edge of the stage and whipping up the crowd with the spirited verve of his hero Joe Strummer, the “saint” who always gets a toast in the show-opening “Constructive Summer.” Finn’s unbridled enthusiasm is endearing, though slightly less so if you’ve seen The Hold Steady a few times and can spot the over-used tools in his bag of uplifting rock shtick. The most egregious example is the “There’s so much joy in what we do up here!” speech that always comes during the climactic performance of “Killer Parties,” a moment that seems increasingly less sincere and more forced every time Finn repeats it.
As any good writing teacher will tell you, it’s always better to show rather than tell, and Finn is far more entertaining when he’s expressing his joy in musical terms. And there was plenty to embrace during the band’s set, which leaned heavily on old chestnuts like “Hot Soft Light” and the eternally brilliant “Sequestered In Memphis” that meshed surprisingly well with newer material like the heart-tugging anthem “The Weekenders.”
Miwaukee’s Jaill capped off a memorable year that included the release of its fine Sup Pop debut That’s How We Burn by walking onstage at the Riverside to the triumphant strains of Kanye West’s “All Of The Lights.” But there were no signs of Kanye-style pomposity in the band’s fun and frisky set, which spotlighted the group’s buzzsaw garage-pop songcraft.
