Rock Problems

As I walked from Boston Common to the Royale with Cheese (aka the club formerly known as the Roxy) last night, I noticed a long line of people crowded outside the Colonial Theater. Turns out they were there to see Rock of Ages, a musical that's supposedly about the power of rock. Meanwhile, I was on my way to see a band that truly encompasses that spirit: The Hold Steady.

Sure, their latest album, Heaven is Whenever, wasn't quite up to the lofty heights of their first four releases, but it was still pretty good. The magical blog nerd buzz that surrounded the band for much of the last half of the last decade seems to have dissipated this year (although the album charted at #26, their highest-ever showing), but having seen the band twice before, I knew they'd put on a great show. The last time I saw the band was 2006, when I caught them at The Middle East in Cambridge in October and then again two months later in New Orleans at the House of Blues. Both shows were transcendent, sloppy and incredibly fun.

I got to the club early to catch opening act Wintersleep, a Nova Scotian band that I'd heard several times on the great hockey podcast A Foot in the Crease. The five-piece specializes in roiling, slow-building songs that grow to a glorious rock crescendo. Definitely worth further investigation.

The headliners hit the stage at 9:20 and plunged right into "Constructive Summer" off 2008's Stay Positive. While not sold out, the club was pretty packed and up near the stage, the crowd was raucous. The band didn't imbibe as much as they did when I saw them four years ago, but that didn't stop everybody else from pounding the beverages and pogoing up a storm on the faster songs.

Frontman Craig Finn still gives off the same spastic English teacher vibe, half-playing his guitar and half clapping in between delivering his tales of young love and substance abuse. Lead guitarist Tad Kubler still ripped off one hot solo after another and drummer Bobby Drake had a massive gong a la Alex Van Halen that he unfortunately never set on fire. But the band had a different feel than previous tours because of the absence of the great Franz Nicolay, whose keyboards and prodigious moustache were a huge part of the band.

The band's touring lineup features guitarist Steve Selvidge (formerly of Lucero) and keyboardist Dan Neustadt. Selvidge provided a little more heft with his rhythm parts, allowing Kubler to wail away and Finn to do his thing. Unlike Nicolay's prominent positioning, Neustadt was tucked away in the back next to Drake, but he provided backing vocals and filled in important organ and piano parts.

The Hold Steady steamrolled through 23 songs in its 95-minute set, sprinkling in songs from each album, including five from the latest release. It was interesting to see the response to older songs like "Barfruit Blues" and "Hornets! Hornets!," which featured Finn's earlier talk-singing style to songs from the last three albums like "Massive Nights," "Southtown Girls" and "You Can Make Him Like You," which featured more defined choruses and "whoa-oh-whoa-oh" vocals. The diehard fans were reciting every word and inflection of the older tunes, but everybody was belting out the choruses to the newer ones.

There was some grumbling afterward about songs the band didn't play, as there always is when an act has five albums of material to pick from. I would've loved to have heard "Cattle and the Creeping Things," "Killer Parties," and "The Swish," but that's how it goes. Most of the songs were close to the album version, although the band stretched out on "Your Little Hoodrat Friend" when Selvidge, Kubler and Finn all started playing unison space-rock solos like something out of an Outlaws show. It would have been great to hear more, but Royale shows are always done right at 11. The band closed with "Slapped Actress," which ends with a great a capella wordless chorus that everybody in the place joined in on. Perfect end to a terrific night of rock.

As the crowd filtered out toward the Common, ears ringing and clothes sweaty from bouncing around with like-minded souls, it ran into the audience leaving Rock of Ages. The latter group was well-dressed, a little older (probably my age) and clutching bags of Rock of Ages merch. It was a nice juxtaposition of the current state of the music industry: The unheralded real deal vs. the pre-packaged approximation of rock.

The set list:
Constructive Summer
Massive Nights
Hurricane J
Sequestered in Memphis
Barfruit Blues
Rock Problems
You Can Make Him Like You
Sweet Part of the City
Magazines
Stevie Nix
Ask Her for some Adderol
You Gotta Dance (With Who You Came With)
Chips Ahoy!
Stuck Between Stations
Lord, I'm Discouraged
The Weekenders
Southtown Girls
Your Little Hoodrat Friend
Stay Positive
A Slight Discomfort

Encore:
Hornets! Hornets!
Banging Camp
Slapped Actress



Stuck Between Stations (on Letterman):