The Hold Steady will be releasing their sixth album, Teeth Dreams, on Tuesday, March 25, but you can hear it right now on iTunes Radio.
The Hold Steady will be releasing their sixth album, Teeth Dreams, on Tuesday, March 25, but you can hear it right now on iTunes Radio. The album is the group’s first on self-owned label Positive Jams, which will be distributed by Washington Square/Razor & Tie (which is distributed by Sony’s RED Distribution sales facilitation business… the music industry is confusing sometimes). It’s also their first album in four years, and follows a two-year hiatus during which frontman Craig Finn released a solo album.
So how’s it sound? Well, if you’re looking for the rollicking organ-driven bizarro bar-band rock of Separation Sunday, you may be disappointed. Organist Franz Nicolay left the group after 2008’s Stay Positive, and a lot of the more unconventional edges from their early work have been smoothed out, so this three-guitar album isn’t exactly a return to the off-kilter nerdiness of Craig Finn and Tad Kubler’s pre-Hold Steady work in Lifter Puller, either. But Finn’s Springsteen-style ability to tell a story through lyrics is undiminished, and the band is still capable of writing a catchy chorus. If you’re the sort of person that can see the merit in the last couple of Replacements albums (and/or the first few Paul Westerberg solo albums), or if you find Soul Asylum a pleasure that you don’t even feel all that guilty about, you should dig what you hear here.
Stream the new Hold Steady album by going to iTunesRadio.com/TheHoldSteady. One warning, though–if you’re the sort of person who tends to dismiss those constant iTunes update popups, you’re going to have a bit of a wait before you can hear it. Only the latest version of iTunes works with iTunes Radio, and I had to spend 15 minutes downloading, installing, and rebooting before I could play this album. But when the album won’t be out for five days, it’s a short wait in comparison.
P.S. Believe it or not, The Hold Steady will be in Richmond next month to play the XL102 Chili Cookoff, happening at the Richmond Raceway Complex on Saturday, April 19. To see the full lineup and order tickets, click here.
