Top 5 of the Decade – #2
- Cover of Separation Sunday
2) The Hold Steady: Separation Sunday
This is a real Rock and Roll record, the way that ‘Appetite For Destruction’ is a real Rock and Roll record. You can’t take it away from them. It also presents a narrative voice as unique and wise as it is fun and clever, somehow balancing a somewhat ironic distance with a sincere declaration about the 90’s drug hangover that permeated much of the music of the early to mid ‘00s. The narrative is sprawling and messy to match its subject matter of cross-country drug binges and the struggle between salvation and religion. A true song-cycle that is as unpretentious as it is sophisticated. It doesn’t so much romanticize these adventures so much as suggest a world where the popular culture is less dominated by capitalist bravado and more by a dark and desperate need for transcendence by any means possible.
Best Track: Multitude of Casualties
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Tags: The Hold Steady
