That music critics never fail to be heavy-handed when quoting the Hold Steady’s lyrics is just one clue to the big-picture ingenuity of singer/guitarist Craig Finn. Sure, the Hold Steady is a band propelled by critical acclaim. (Last year’s Almost Killed Me showed up on the best-records-you-didn’t-hear lists of MAGNET, Spin and Rolling Stone.) But it was old, reliable necessity that really invented the Hold Steady’s brand of smart bar rock. If the current musical era is ruled by reconstituted new wave and post-punk prettyboys like the Rapture and Franz Ferdinand, then the New York quintet’s Thin Lizzy guitar solos, E Street Band keyboards and AC/DC riffs are kryptonite, and thirtysomething everyman Finn is a ranting antihero. He’s the perfect narrator for the outsiders who inhabit the songs on Separation Sunday (Frenchkiss). With a vocal bark that bears the bite marks of Andrew Dice Clay and the Fall’s Mark E. Smith, Finn rails off a detailed narrative of drug-addicted fast times and growing up Catholic. Separation Sunday is a book-on-tape, a grim and funny tome that draws from the Bible (“Cattle And The Creeping Things”) and Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas (“Multitude Of Casualties”). The twin themes of religion and addiction dovetail with the album’s main character going down to the river, dunking her head toward a nitrous tank and being born again. Or born to run. Or whatever. Oh, and the obligatory lyrical selection: “I grew up in denial/And I went to school in Massachusetts.”

Almost Killed Me ended up on a lot of “best record you didn’t hear” lists, including MAGNET’s. At what point does that become a backhanded compliment?
It is kind of funny—you show your dad and he’s like, “Well, why didn’t anybody hear it?” The reality is that even an “alternative” magazine like Spin might have U2 in their best records list, and you arguably can’t get bigger than U2. So it’s a different playing field. For us, it was very exciting, and it breathed a lot of life into the record. A lot of people checked it out because of that. I was very surprised that both Spin and Rolling Stone had it at the top of the list. I don’t know if that’s ever been done before.

It’s almost embarrassing for us in the media, because those lists are supposed to be discoveries. When one band shows up on all of them, it’s kind of like, “Nice detective work.” Why do you think people—writers, in particular—responded so well to Almost Killed Me?
There are two things. One, it’s a wordy record, and journalists work with words and probably like words, and the amount of lyrics gave them something to write about. Number two, we got together as a band to play covers for this comedy troupe we were friends with. We were doing “Back In Black,” Thin Lizzy songs and Zeppelin riffs, and it sounded so fresh because there’d been so much soulless music—new wave or dance punk or whatever—and it felt good to hear hard rock after hearing the Rapture or whatever. You know, bands that have drums instead of drum machines.

That’s a clear sentiment on the record, especially with the lyric about how “the ’80s almost killed me.” The combination of fashion/music/advertising is so heavy right now.
For someone who lived through the ’80s the first time, it wasn’t cool or funny or cute. It was embarrassing. It was the Reagan era, a really ugly time. Like, you’re working at some office park in suburban St. Louis and you go to T.G.I. Friday’s and they put on an ’80s mix. I think that’s super lame. For the Faint to come out and do a Depeche Mode thing, that’s just as lame. At the same time, [the Hold Steady] could be accused of doing something from a different era. But there was also a lack of a smart rock band—there are obviously rock bands, like the White Stripes, who I like, but also a lot were just retro or stoner-rock bands.

Maybe some of it is just getting older and cranky.
Absolutely it is. That would be a very valid criticism. A friend of mine was talking about the song “Most People Are DJs” from Almost Killed Me and saying, “These are hipster kids. They’re 23. They have nothing to do with you. Leave them alone.” Point well taken.

Sort of. Certainly, the 23-year-old culture in—where do you live in New York?
I live in Williamsburg.

So it’s pretty much right there in your face.
Yeah. I think the whole idea of the Hold Steady was pretty fresh—not in the sense of “new,” but maybe it’s classic rock with a small “c.” These riffs that you grew up with, they’re ground zero. I think that’s sort of what we do.

The guitar solos by Tad (Kubler) contribute to that.
You don’t really hear a lot of solos in rock records anymore. In that Metallica movie, there was a scene where they decided not to have solos on the record because it wasn’t in anymore. At the same time, things become so uncool that they become cool again—maybe that’s what happened with the ’80s—and we tapped into that with the guitar solo and what we call a “rooftop sax solo.” A bar band playing in a corner bar is the aesthetic we were trying to capture, and that’s the furthest thing from Williamsburg chic.

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