The 11 Best Songs By The Hold Steady

 No lyricist can capture life better in a song than Craig Finn.  If you need to hire someone to paint a picture of the tired, the working class, and the rejected in one portrait than the Hold Steady can put it to music.  They're the blue collar garage rockers to white collars of mainstream rock radio.  What Springsteen was raging about before he found his calling as a runner, The Hold Steady delivers with a habitual grind of grit, pantheon and pride.  They're the Northern States answer to the Skynyrds and the Tuckers.  From a world of skyscrapers, coffee carts and bitter cold, where salvation is defined by finding just enough pocket change in your coat for a cab ride home.  It's about staying positive when life is at its most mundane.  That no matter the height of the struggle, everyone of us is in it together.

Here are the 11 Best Songs By The Hold Steady:

1. Chips Ahoy! (Boys And Girls In America)
2. Soft In The Center (Heaven Is Whenever)
3. Both Crosses (Stay Positive)
4. Cattle And The Creeping Things (Separation Sunday)
5. Stuck Between Stations (Boys And Girls In America)
6. Your Little Hoodrat Friend (Separation Sunday)
7. Stay Positive (Stay Positive)
8. Knuckles (Almost Killed Me)
9. Sequestered In Memphis (Stay Positive)
10. The Swish (Almost Killed Me)
11. Hot Soft Light (Boys And Girls In America)

Buy The Hold Steady's new album, Teeth Dreams...now!!!

Don't forget to check out our blog's awesome new book The 111 Best Lists of the 2000s.  Available now! (featuring Hold Steady)

The Best Albums of 2012 (12-22)

Merry Christmas to all.

Sometimes Christmas surprises you.  For years I've grown complacent with Christmas presents.  Not for others.  For others I go all out spending most of the year trying to figure out exactly what they want.  What I'm referring to is what is given to me.  I'm not bitching about peoples' generosity, everyone around me is very generous but sometimes their presents miss the mark and I spend most of the day smiling and thanking people for something I'm figuring out how I'm going to return.  This year something different happened.  I'm a huge Smashing Pumpkins fan...if you haven't noticed in my Billy Corgan manlove.  I've purchased all the reissues thus far.The Pumpkins reissues have been one of the best remaster/editions to come out in years.  Though it comes close to the "wall of sound" disaster that ruined Nevermind...it toes close enough to the line to respectfully keep the original sound intact.  Naturally, I admired the Mellon Collie box set from afar.  I thought the Pisces price tag of $40 was steep...but the Mellon Collie set weighs in at over $100.  Granted you get 5 discs worth of material...plus a DVD.  It was still far above what I could handle paying.  I joked with my brother about getting it for me...knowing fair well that he would never cough up the dough for it.  My brother would rather spend $100 on polishing the tires on his Maserati than ever think about doing something like this.  Granted, his tires do get dirty very easily.  I had begun plotting how I might be able to download the bonus tracks though the availability of them was very slim.  I had resigned the fact that this one would be the box set that would just get away.  Then, Christmas morning I unwrapped it.  The last present under the tree happened to be the one thing I wanted that I never thought I'd have.  Though it wasn't from my brother...it was a bit of a Christmas miracle.

A post about this SP set will be coming shortly...

Here are the Best Albums of 2012 (12-22):

12.  Jeff The Brotherhood - Hypnotic Nights 
13.  Chiddy Bang - Breakfast 
14.  Of Monsters and Men - My Head Is An Animal 
15.  Frank Ocean - Channel Orange
16.  The Raveonettes - Observator 
17.  Crystal Castles - III
18.  Craig Finn - Clear Heart Full Eyes 
19.  Japandroids - Celebration Rock 
20.  Van Halen - A Different Kind of Truth 
21.  The Lumineers - The Lumineers 
22.  Kendrick Lamar - good kid, maad city (Bonus Track)

Buy these albums and more now!!!

The 11 Best Albums of 2012 So Far

I've never figured out the way critics decide which aging rock stars to skewer and which ones to reward.  There were a lot of big releases last year from bands making comebacks.  There were many of them I was very impressed with...only to read the reviews later and find out I must be sorely mistaken.  I thought the new album by the Red Hot Chili Peppers was their best since Blood Sugar Sex Magic, but when I read the reviews they told me it might be "their worst effort"...and "a sign of the apocalypse of alternative music."  I was pleasantly surprised by the new Janes Addiction.  But the reviewers called it "musical retardation," "F-minus," and "dead baby dumpster drivel."  Meanwhile, I thought the new Bush and Beastie Boys were huge disappointments to only learn that they were some of the best comebacks of the year.  I know music is arbitrary...but sometimes it seems like a band's hip factor has more to say about whether their album will be well-received or not.

This year...I at least seem to be somewhat inline with the critics.  I doubt VH will stay atop the list for the whole year...but it's nice to a familiar face leading the pack out of the gates.

Here are the 11 Best Albums of 2012 so far:

1.       Van Halen - A Different Kind of Truth 

2.       Jay Farrar, Will Johnson, Anders Parker, Yim Yames - New Multitudes 

3.       The Big Pink - Future This (Lose Your Mind)

4.       Craig Finn - Clear Heart Full Eyes

5.       Sleigh Bells - Reign of Terror

6.       Cloud Nothings - Attack on Memory (Stay Useless)

7.       WZRD - WZRD

8.       Anais Mitchell - Young Man in America

9.       Grimes - Visions

10.   Chiddy Bang - Breakfast

11.   Burial - Kindred EP