Posted on by daniel.shvartsman

A Positive Jam Track 3: Barfruit Blues

“The Swish” pushed the bar to a new height for The Hold Steady, but after a sludgy start, “Barfruit Blues” goes out and tops it. The song turns on a dime into a soaring, affirmative song about the power of music. The band’s back together, they’re back in a bar, and it’s better to leave and return than to never go anywhere at all. Right?

Mike and Daniel break down the razor-sharp lines on this track and how a jumble of sounds and parts comes together by the second half to make for a triumphant third track on Almost Killed Me. As a bonus, this episode features an archival live version of the song from 2005 where Craig Finn dishes a little bit more on where this song comes from.

This is Daniel’s favorite song on the record, and Mike has come around on it over the years as well. They talk about Finn’s vocal delivery, the melding of the musical parts over the course of the song, and the import of both bruising and barfruits.

Here’s the episode itself.

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Here are a few categories and things to listen for, in the song itself and in our podcast:

Best Line in the song: We have too many to just narrow down to one. Here’s a top 3:

  1. She said “I’m sorry, people think I’m pretty.”
  2. Thought she was a dancer but her steps they made the records skip
  3. Went down with some crust punk junk and woke up with a straight edge band. That’s not how he planned it

Top 3 Bigger Picture Hold Steady things: 

  1. Our introduction to Clever Kids.
  2. Our introduction to Holly (who doesn’t feel all that sweet).
  3. Like Positive Jam, this is a meta song about the band’s formation, and as Mike points out, that is backed up by how the song comes together.

Best musical moment: As much as the soaring guitars rising out of the ‘That’s not how he planned it’ line are like a sweet release, we have to go with Finn’s back and forth with his fan-emy heckling him about being back in the bar. The delivery on his retort is perfect.

Billy Joel/Bruce Springsteen or AC/DC/Thin Lizzy?: Every Hold Steady track seems to exist on this spectrum. It’s a contrast between loud, guitar-driven rock that takes no prisoners and more of a soulful, troubadour lyricism both in the melody and the lyrics themselves. Like any band, the Hold Steady is at their best when they forge their influences into a unique sound. But it’s still fun to try to rank their songs by which side of the line they’re closer to, so we do that frequently on our podcast’s episodes. And even if we don’t remember to do so live, we can revisit here thanks to our handy graphics department.

“Barfruit Blues” is pretty sonically on the AC/DC side of the scale, with a guitar riff that Mike says recalls Guns N Roses’s “Sweet Child of Mine”. But the shout out to Born to Run and the drama that the song is steeped with, as well as the ‘back in the bar’ dynamic that recalls ‘Glory Days’, mean this song has a heavy dose of Springsteen as well, so we’re closer to the middle of the spectrum. 

Important call-out: Galen Polivka really holds it down on the bass to start this episode. Craig Finn (vocals/guitar) and Tad Kubler (lead guitar) and later on Franz Nicolay (Piano/keyboards) usually dominate discussion of the band, but a bass player can pull it all together.

Also: Craig’s vocals are both atonal enough for the band to just switch keys behind him without him changing a vote and so deliciously phrased to make the chorus line pack a major bite. 

Biggest question: Which is better, to be back in a bar band or still in the bar?

Review of the week: Shout out to Clicks And Hisses, who said the following on Twitter:

Thanks, Clicks and Hisses, who run a must-follow site for Hold Steady fans here. 

Key Episode Insight: Barfruits bruise pretty naturally and also should never be consumed. See Mike’s comments towards the end of the episode.