Track Listing

1. Constructive Summer
2. Sequestered in Memphis
3. One for the Cutters
4. Navy Sheets
5. Lord, I'm Discouraged
6. Yeah Sapphire
7. Both Crosses
8. Stay Positive
9. Magazines
10. Joke About Jamaica
11. Slapped Actress

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #13667 in Music
• Released on: 2008-07-15
• Number of discs: 1

Album Description
Stay Positive is the fourth studio album from The Hold Steady and follows their hugely popular 2006 release Girls And Boys In America. Working once again with producer John Agnello (Sonic Youth, Dinosaur Jr.), the album sees the band continue in the same direction their previous release took them, mixing classic bar-room style Rock with Craig Finn's half spoken/half sung lyrical tales of drinking, partying and love. Features the single 'Sequestered In Memphis'.

Amazon.co.uk
The Hold Steady's ascent and eventual breakthrough with 2006's Boys & Girls in America was never pre-ordained. If anything they did it without the tastemakers' consent. Their shtick is old-fashioned through and through, beginning with Thin Lizzy and ending with Bruce Springsteen, performed by men advanced enough to have experienced those touchstones first or second hand. And look at them--not exactly The Strokes, are they? But it was precisely their enthusiastic unoriginality, the fact that the clichés were piled on so thick and so fast, that they triumphed. And placed next to that unapologetically feel good record, that Stay Positive sounds so immediately brighter and more muscular is undoubtedly a great sign. Production is really cranked up--see the horns wedged into "Sequestered in Memphis", the REM mandolin texturing of "Both Crosses" and the surprising harpsichord flagrancy of "One for the Cutters". They're clearly determined to not be so easily pegged this time around, though admittedly they never exactly go that far off-piste. "Our songs are sing-along songs," announced Craig Finn semi-helpfully, and though the spirit is right, with such a conversational lyrical style that is rarely the case. It's more about the rock gestures and knowing when to punch the air. And there are instances aplenty, from the Pete Townsend-esque windmill power-chords in "Constructive Summer", to the overblown solo in "Lord I'm Discouraged" that is so "November Rain" it's practically going through Stephanie Seymour's trash (those not watching MTV in the mid-90s, hit Youtube). --James Berry

Customer Reviews

Stay Positive
News of the new Hold Steady album raised a lot of questions. Could it possibly live up to the escalating expectations their first three albums produced? Will the familiar characters of the past be back? Can Craig Finn keep writing the wittiest lyrics in rock music? Will every review make a Springsteen comparison? The answer to all of these questions is yes.

Stay Positive was released in digital form last month and like it's predecessors gets off to a rocking start with "Constructive Summer" which revisits Boys and Girls in America's theme of partying with friends while tossing in a toast to "St. Joe Strummer" who "might have been our only decent teacher". "Sequestered in Memphis" keeps the rocking party going but throws some shadows in the lyrics. There are subpoenas and sequesters, and the lyrics seem to be the response to an interrogation. In Craig Finn's addled world you don't go back to her place when you leave the bar, you go to "someplace where she cat sits".

When a harpsicord leads off the third song "One for the Cutters" you start to realize you may not be in Minnesota anymore. Kids are being killed, suspects are on the run, and every townie is being paraded to the police station. What follows in the album are the consequences to the partying. Characters are older but not wiser, and aging but not gracefully. Holly (who like Gideon and Charlemagne are never named) may be in worse shape than where she was left in the song "First Night" from BAGIA. "Lord I'm Discouraged", a heartbreaking ballad with a monster guitar solo finds the singer pining away for her and praying "she don't die".

Even the title track "Stay Positive" warns "There's gonna time a time when the scene'll seem less sunny." and begins a great four song sequence that culminates with "Slapped Actress" which may be the best song The Hold Steady has ever released. The song, influenced by the John Cassavetes movie "Opening Night" sways back and forth between re-examining the events in previous albums "Don't tell them Ybor City almost killed us again" and exploring the relationship between the performer and the fans "Some nights, it's just entertainment and some other nights it's work".

If you are a Hold Steady fan "Stay Positive" has the comforting themes, name and song dropping, intertwined lyrics and explosive sound you are used to. If not "Stay Positive" may be the album that will make you go back to find out what happened before this, as BAGIA was for me. In any event it is The Hold Steady's most musically diverse album to date, with a storyline that can stand up to the brilliant "Separation Sunday", something even the most positive Hold Steady fan may be surprised by.

Great Album - Horribly over compressed
This excellent record deserves to be played loud. Unfortunately, it's been so aggressively mastered, that I haven't been able to turn it up without distorting.
I'll gladly pay twice if somebody can tell me that the vinyl was treated differently.
Musically, this is the best album of the year.
Sonically, the wrong mastering for what should be a loud, dynamic rock masterpiece.

The Hold Steady are Ready for their Close-up
As a long time (since 2004!) Hold Steady fan, Stay Positive just seems like the natural progression of the band into the mainstream. Not as self-referential as Almost Killed Me or Separation Sunday, even more commercial than Boys and Girls in America. They spread out a little bit with some imaginative instrumentation. (Banjo and Harpsichord!?)

If this is your introduction to The Hold Steady, enjoy. Even better, listen to the first three albums first to see their impressive development.