1990s
this band has been getting a lot of hype across the pond over the last year or so, and they were a fun warmup group ... they sounded a lot like 60s blues-rock / british invasion type of groups, i caught a lot of early rolling stones in their vibe ... their lead singer was shockingly / hilariously bad looking, with stereotypical british teeth / overbite, he was great
Art Brut
i've been listening to these guys a lot over the last couple of years, and i was REALLY impressed by their set ... they had an insane live show which really matched their sing-song/spoken word off-the-cuff punk style ... frontman eddie argos has to be seen to be believed, he's really a force on stage ... eddie's heavy english accent is a little hard to follow at times, and the video projector flashing select lyrics to each song was a great addition to the show ... it's hard to sum up in a blog post, but these guys put on one of the best performances i've seen all year, they just dominated the crowd ... if i was the hold steady, i might have been a little pissed at how much grandstanding they were doing after their set, i felt like the night was over when they stepped off the stage (in a good way)
The Hold Steady
but ohhhhhh, craig finn and the hold steady know how to hold their own
i'm convinced that these guys, if not for the drive-by truckers, would be the best american rock-and-roll band alive today ... i see the hold steady as the northern counterpart (they're from, and constantly sing about, minneapolis MN) to the drive-by truckers ... both groups cut to the heart of the american experience, but just from radically different perspectives
like singing a post-modern "thunder road" or "jack and diane", craig finn of the hold steady has an unbelievable knack for writing lyrics from the perspective of ordinary down-and-out american kids ... craig's cuttingly subversive lyrics are couched in this musical tension between quintessential, anthemic major-chord classic rock and the reckless fuck-it-all style of their fellow minneapolitans (and my favorite band) the replacements
seeing the hold steady live, it felt like watching the bastard child of elvis costello and woody allen fronting the e street band ... craig finn is hilarious, he's just a big set of horn-rim glasses bouncing all over the stage with these jittery nebbish mannerisms
Art Brut v. The Hold Steady
forgive me for getting all music critic on you, but these bands are perfect counterparts ... while art brut combines hilarious spoken-word lyrics with a textbook british punk-rock sound that evokes everyone from the jam to the arctic monkeys, the hold steady puts cutting spoken-word sing-song lyrics with a textbook american classic rock sound that evokes the boss ... i'm not sure who put this bill together, but it was fantastic planning
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