The Hold Steady: Heaven Is Whenever

At the beginning of the year, The Hold Steady announced it was amicably parting ways with Franz Nicolay, whose whirling, dramatic piano and organ heavily marked the band’s last two albums, Boys And Girls In America and Stay Positive. Some fans assumed that Nicolay’s departure would make for a leaner, less melodramatic band, but The Hold Steady’s fifth album, Heaven Is Whenever, sounds as deliberately mythical as ever. Partly it’s the tempos, which are slower en masse than ever, but it’s also the tone of the songs, which are the most elegiac bunch that Craig Finn has written. Finn has apparently moved permanently away from his talk-rant vocal mode, and as his singing becomes more expressive it also takes on a wistful quality that fits songs that are explicitly about memory and time, as well as music that settles deeper into classic rock with fewer musical wrinkles than before.