Hostile, Mass is another quintessential Hold Steady track. A mix of punky snarl, classic guitar licks, and Springsteenian sax solos and hope, the track is a stand-out for Almost Killed Me and an ill omen for the band’s future at the same time.
To break it all down, we’re joined by Leon Neyfakh of Fiasco and Slow Burn fame. He explains why this is his favorite track on the album, as the conversation runs the gamut from NoFX to the persistence of high school drop-out fashion sensibilities to why Season 3 of A Positive Jam should be about the Smashing Pumpkins.
We also weigh whether the Hold Steady Universe plot line matters if you want to enjoy the music and break out another Map Corner.
Here’s the episode itself.
You can also subscribe to the show at all of these places:
And leave us a review or a rating on Apple or Stitcher if you can!
Here are a few categories and things to listen for, in the song itself and in our podcast:
Best wordplay in the song
Charlemagne didn’t feel any pain / But he’s bleeding from the holes in his story
“Hey, my name is Corey. I’m really into hardcore. People call me hard Corey.”
Wandered out of mass one day and faded into the fog and love and faithless fear.
New perspective: Is the narrator in this song just a frustrated onlooker, angry he’s missing out on the girls and the fun, or a wiser head who knows what you’re supposed to do if you have track marks?
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.
Leon proposes that there is the third key axis to the Hold Steady, a hardcore branch which shows up mostly in lyrics and attitude. This is a fair point, though it poses challenges for our graphics team. Still, we took a crack at it.
The song is more punky than not, so we pulled on some Boston references to situate the band closer to Mission of Burma than The Cars. At the same time, that sax solo is about as Clarence Clemons/E Street Band/Bruce Springsteen as you can get, so that pushes an otherwise gritty song to the left side of the spectrum.
Biggest question: It’s all about the sax solo. Good or not? Bad for the future of the band or not?
Favorite Massachusetts towns that Hard Corey would be from instead of Lynn:
MA native Daniel argues that Lynn isn’t the right hometown for a clever kid like Corey. Here are six towns more representative of a clever kid who might still really be into hardcore.
Reading
Methuen
Duxbury
North Attleboro
Needham
Swampscott
Key Episode Insight: The early Hold Steady albums presented a lot of contrasts – major key, soaring melody and harmony set against violent, depressing lyrics. Hostile, MA may be the sharpest contrast – is this a hero’s journey out of the scene, or an abandonment of a burning building?
The end of my summer included an eight-hour road trip and then a decent amount of driving while on my vacation. I also started going to the gym again. All of that means my podcast listening time increased. Which means I have a few extra podcasts to review this week.
I listened to a mix of bigger-name podcasts and more ‘indie’ podcasts, and dove into a few music podcasts given our continued focus there for A Positive Jam, as well as one investment podcast that is a blue-chipper. For the review format, I’m adding which episodes I listened to that constitute the review.
Gimlet is a leading podcast studio, one of Spotify’s big acquisitions. I don’t know their gamut of podcasts well enough to say, but I follow one of the writers for this podcast and it seems to me that How To Save A Planet was a big launch. It gets prominence in the PocketCasts app, for example, and the CEO and cofounder of Gimlet (Alex Blumberg) is one of the hosts, along with a leading climate policy expert and do-it-all, Dr. Ayanna Elizabeth Johnson. So it’s both worth listening to for what they’re saying about an important topic and to consider their choices from a podcasting perspective.
The biggest thing I’ve noticed from the first two episodes as far as structure is that this blends different podcasting styles in an interesting way. I don’t mean to oversell my categorization of podcasting types, as many podcasts mix up their approach, but How To Save A Planet does so in a new way, to me.
The hosts are very conversational, and have an easy, likable rapport that pulls the listener in – though I am looking forward to when the ‘hey, we have a podcast!’ bits fade out. They also feature interviews though; the hosts interview key guests or the reporters on the team, and those reporters are speaking with people in the field. Which is the third element, of course, the reporting and story-telling element.
Each of the first two episodes tells a story, one about the rise of wind-powered energy in the US and the challenges and opportunities therein, and one about the adoption of the Green New Deal framework in Europe. They use the episode – about 40 minutes in length – to organize a full example or picture of an aspect of the climate change economy and challenge.
The other big choice they make is to end each episode with a call to action, or more specifically offer ways for listeners to get involved in response to the episode’s topic. Theoretically, this crosses some sort of journalistic line. I don’t come from a full journalism background, and in the current subjective vs. objective debate old distinctions have been challenged if not blurred, but it seems that if there’s any topic worthy of a more advocacy-driven approach, it’s climate change. So I think it’s a nice touch.
There’s also a potential dissonance in how conversational and light the back and forth between the hosts can be, given the weight of the topic, but that’s probably also deliberate. That lightness makes it enjoyable to listen and is likely to keep listeners coming back, while still delivering the unvarnished facts of the world’s ill health.
(Small thing for podcasters to take comfort in – episode one features a Zoom robot glitch, which happens sometimes when recording. If it can slip through on a Spotify/Gimlet show, it can happen to anyone!)
Get Offset focuses on music, with a prism of music gear as a starting point. It’s a smart way to differentiate, and while I am a total gear noob, they seem to know their stuff. I listened because someone on twitter introduced us to this given their Hold Steady fandom (full disclosure: we’re hoping to have Emily join us on A Positive Jam). I listened to both their Hold Steady interviews. They take their time building up a flow with the guest, and then get to some really interesting points about touring, or in the second episode’s case – recorded with Hold Steady guitarist Steve Selvidge at the beginning of the pandemic – over the state of the music industry as lockdowns were beginning. I did not hear much about cats, but cats is apparently a side-focus for the podcast which I wholeheartedly endorse.
Slow Burn is another one of those podcasts that almost defines the medium. (As a disclosure, the host of the first two seasons, Leon Neyfakh, guests on A Positive Jam this week.) I listened to season 2 a few months ago, and had dabbled in season 3 previously but dove back in over my vacation.
Season 3 covers the rise and fall of Tupac Shakur and the Notorious B.I.G. Similar to Season 2 on the Clinton Impeachment, it’s set in the 90s, which is when I grew up. So the stories were both part of my youth but never fully understood, though the Clinton impeachment has stayed more relevant to me as an adult, and so a little more familiar.
The story itself is great but it’s also worth paying attention to the choices the team makes in how they tell that story. For Season 3, starting in media res with the shooting of Tupac at Quad City Studios both grabs attention and pinpoints the start of the east coast vs. west coast rap battles. The story ends unresolved, but given there’s no findings of who killed either rapper, how else could the story end?
I thought the episode focusing on Dolores Tucker’s crusade against rap lyrics to be an interesting digression from the main plot of the season. I think they wove it in well enough to the season, and it also echoed the episode that focused on gangster rap and the police. I’m wondering if there could have been more reflection or analysis, in retrospect, on Tupac’s evolution from being a feminist to one who appeared to be proudly misogynistic. And I wonder if a little more could have been done to analyze his and Biggie’s motivations and responsibility for all of this – I walked away thinking Tupac was a little less than he was purported to be, and also a hothead who aggravated his circumstances. I don’t think I’m supposed to walk away with that, and a little more context would have been helpful.
That said, I think these podcast series that look at recent past events, whether they be Floodlines, Fiasco (Neyfakh’s new podcast), or the more political focused seasons of Slow Burn, are never going to be able to cover all aspects of the story. They scratch the memory and nostalgia itch, and for those who want to dive deeper, they provide questions and resources so you can dig in. At least, that’s how I’m thinking about it.
(And as a quick thing, Slate’s monetization model is ads plus bonus episodes as part of their membership program – I suppose those bonus episodes would be a way to dive deeper as well. Also a quirk – in Spain I usually don’t get ads from shows hosted on Megaphone, which allows for dynamic ad targeting and, for the US shows I listen to, is usually targeted at the US audience. For whatever reason, all the ads showed up in the last episode).
I came across this while looking for music podcasts, probably on Spotify. There was a two-parter available on the Blues Brothers, a movie I only first watched maybe last summer. I didn’t totally get it; I liked it, but it didn’t appear to me as that classic. That made this two-parter podcast a good place to start..
Our Favorite Sings has great banter, as a starter. It took the hosts Monty and Tiffany about 10-15 minutes to even get to the Blues Brothers, and I didn’t know a lot of the artists they were talking about in the run-up, but their teasing one another and their enthusiasm kept me hooked and laughing. And then when they got to the Blues Brothers, they did a very good job of balancing their personal experience with the subject matter itself. I never thought about the fact that Blues Brothers would of course be playing on WGN whenever there was a hole in the programming (along with Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, I imagine?). And I knew some of the musician cameos in the movie, of course, but missed a few. In any case, they shed light on the movie and their conversation was enjoyable. I plan to check out a couple more episodes when I have the chance.
Podium Podcast is the leading podcast studio in Spain. The charts in Spain are filled with their podcasts as well as radio stations – La Cadena Sur, OndaCero, esRadio – and then a few Spotify Studios podcasts and English language podcasts. So as far as dedicated podcast studios go, they don’t have much competition.
I had previously tried listening to Valencia Destroy, a podcast about the famous Ruta del Bakalao and the music/drug scene on the Valencian coast in the 80s-90s, but I haven’t been able to get past episode 2, mostly due to my own Spanish skills. I’ve also sampled some of their non-documentary podcasts. Igor El Ruso is only a five-part series, and it was more digestible.
Igor El Ruso is the pseudonym for Norbert Feher, a Serbian born near the Hungarian border. He went from petty crime to murder, first in Italy and then in the Aragon region in Spain. The podcast takes us through his story in a fairly classic true-crime way. We hear about his upbringing, we hear from Italian experts and former prisonmates, and we hear how he hid himself in ‘España vacia’, the term for much of the middle of the country that has been depopulated as people head to the cities over the past decades.
The story is well told and well produced, with perhaps a little bit too many sound effects to accentuate the narration. I had trouble understanding some of the interviewees, but that could have been my car audio or my Spanish listening skills rather than the production. I liked the podcast, but the thing I was left asking is what is the ‘so what?’ Why does this matter? It could be that because I’m not fully immersed in Spanish media and day-to-day affairs, I’m just missing that this is self-evident, as important as say the Tupac/Biggie killings covered on Slow Burn. But from listening, the closest I got was that the government was too slow to act, which may be a sign of the neglect in these empty parts of Spain. Whether that was the case or something else, I think the producers and the host, Patricia Peiró, could have hammered this home a little more.
That said, there’s every chance I missed it, and the podcast was enjoyable and well done in any case.
Invest Like The Best is the investing interview podcast. Patrick O’Shaughnessy always comes prepared and is genuinely interested in his guests. He does a good job listening and responding to the conversation, and there are enough standard touches – his closing question, the production at the beginning, repeat guests, and the way he connects conversations – to provide familiarity to listeners. I listened to an interview with Stitch Fix CEO Katrina Lake, someone I admire in the business world, and learned quite a bit from the conversation.
The conversation made me think and spurred me to action in my investing – in the sense of thinking through what I want to do with my investing, I mean, not a straight buy/sell thing – which is about all you can hope for from a show like this, along with an enjoyable conversation.
I’ve always had a soft spot for Detroit, one that grew when I met/dated/married a Michigander, and one that grew more when I realized that there’s a gulf between where she’s from – West Michigan – and the Motor City, a gulf that extends beyond the four hours it takes to drive there. I love cities and love thinking through the life cycle of a city, and cheer for cities with rich cultural histories that are trying to get on the upswing. New Orleans and Detroit, I often say, are the two cities I’d most like to live in if I lived in the states.
So when I became aware of this podcast, because I follow a Detroit historian (Tom Sugrue) who retweeted it at some point, I knew I’d be interested. And in finally listening, I think it’s delivered so far. Each episode is about 20 minutes, allowing enough space to tell a distinct story about the city. Host Tim Kiska tells it straight – and has a great Michigan accent to boot. It will be interesting to see how well he does in representing the diversity of Detroit, a very Black city but also with a ton of different people that have crossed through it. It’s also a city that has often had stuff to come back from, and so it can be hard to tell a positive story without coming off like a booster.
Through the first 7+ episodes (from 2017/2018), I think the show hits the right notes. There’s a bit of a boomer perspective – five of those seven episodes take place in that time period, and two are about the beginning of the 20th century. At the same time, they are interesting nuggets on those periods – about Coleman Young’s testifying before the House of Un-American Activities Committee, or the Detroit Red Wings of the 1950s and the first woman executive of a US sports team. And the 8th episode, which I listened to but with only half a mind, is about the Arab American community in Dearborn and the Detroit area, which points to the show seeking to be representative. I’m learning and enjoying the episodes, and especially enjoy Kiska’s pronunciation of Ossip Gabrilowitsch. That episode, on the building of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra and Orchestra Hall, really encapsulates the show’s approach, and I got a lot out of it.
This is another one of the music podcasts I came across, and one of the more enjoyable ones. Two women review a classic rock (in the broader sense of classic rock) band’s career. I am guessing they are in their mid to late 20s, maybe early 30s, and so they’re coming at these bands fairly fresh, which makes for a fun perspective. It’s not far from the two teenage brothers on youtube listening to old songs for the first time.
I listened to their episode on Rage against the Machine. First, I laughed out loud at the non-sequitur intro about Taco Bell. And then the discussion about Rage and how ‘these bros’ were revolutionaries was fun. I’m not a huge Rage fan but knew enough to follow along, and I thought they hit key elements of the band’s trajectory. Basic research along with personality from the hosts can go a long way in podcasting.
I first became aware of/started ‘podcasting’ in the mid-00’s. I put that in quotes because what we did at 30music.com was compile monthly mixtapes, which we would share on the site as an mp3. I don’t remember us actually being on Apple podcasts, and Spotify had not even been invented yet, but the concept was simple: share our favorite new songs from the month or the year.
Bend & Scoop is one of a few podcasts I’ve learned about recently that is bringing that mixtape style back. Bob Bland, the host, pulls together a few movie clips for the intro (I believe the title of the podcast is a Cheech & Chong quote), classic radio jingles for transitions, and explains which songs you are hearing. The music trends towards a variety of indie rock, including many bands I haven’t heard of, so it’s a cool way of raising their profile and an enjoyable mix.
He’s also recently started adding an interview segment at the end of episodes, called ‘is that your vinyl answer’, where he brings on another podcaster as a guest to talk about their vinyl collection and music in general, as a way of promoting the vinyl record store industry, which is cool. Full disclosure – I am appearing as a guest on this week’s episode, I believe. But I think this is an example of an organic podcast bringing good energy to the world, good stuff.
More than any other track on the album, “Knuckles” shows what makes the Hold Steady different. The one liners, the pop culture references, the crunchy guitars. The quips and the catalog of missed expectations are enough to fill a couple podcast episodes.
But there’s more to the song than Craig Finn’s comedy routine. Matt Brooks rejoins co-hosts Mike Taylor and Daniel Shvartsman, to discuss key themes – Knuckles’ political context and whether this is a protest song; the dissonance between the narrator’s view of himself and what other people think; Craig Finn’s lyrical techniques; and the jagged synth lines that fall alongside the lyrics like bits of confetti.
Most importantly, we take a beat to consider the classic Sunny D commercial and how that puts The Hold Steady on the map.
Here’s the episode itself.
You can also subscribe to the show at all of these places:
And leave us a review or a rating on Apple or Stitcher if you can!
Here are a few categories and things to listen for, in the song itself and in our podcast:
Best Freds or Freddies in this song:
Freddie Mercury
Freddy Fresh
Right Said Fred
Political or Protest: We kicked the episode off by talking about whether the song is a protest song; it’s a bit of a weird angle (blame Daniel), but we thrashed out a distinction. Political songs come steeped in the context of the world around them – wars going down in the Middle East and the Middle West, flakes cooking up batches of crystal meth – while protest songs are more didactic and blunt. Protest songs can still be effective, timeless pieces, but it’s tougher given their nature. We think Knuckles is ultimately a political song, and even more a song about posing and trying to strive for something you’re not reaching.
What happened to Minnesota nice: The midwest is known for its friendly people, flat accents, and the decay of its industry, among other things. In this song, Finn and co. focus on the damage being wrought in the midwest from drugs and heavy-handed authority. We may be imposing our view from 16 years on, and the beat in this song obscures the darkness, but it is a grim picture of the middle western states, nevertheless. In 2020, we can’t help but see some elements of prophecy in this grim vision.
Most brutal moment: A nickname like ‘The Cool Guy’, which guest Matt Brooks confessed to being tagged with, that is a tough nickname to live down. We’ve all been hit with a bad nickname or two, but, man.
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.
“Knuckles” is the song that least fits on this spectrum. It’s a harder-edged song, so we position it closer to the AC/DC side, but it’s really as close to a punk song as any on the album. We talk about the punk/hardcore third dimension for the Hold Steady on the next episode, but for now, Knuckles drifts closer to hard rock than classic rock, in our book.
Biggest question: What to make of the chintzy keyboard flourishes that hang out on the far edges of the verse? Proof that this narrator isn’t as tough as he thinks he is, or just an odd touch?
Pop culture and nostalgia: The Pitchfork review at the time called out Finn’s classic Sunny D breakdown as ‘instantly tiring’. We’re fans of Amanda Petrusich, the author of that review, but any line that goes so far as to weave a Sunny D and Five Alive combo into the plot of the song, to time it with the instruments dropping out, and to evoke a key piece of 90s nostalgia like the Sunny D skaters commercial, it’s so bad its good and then some.
Review of the week:
Key Episode Insight: It’s fun to aspire for a libertine lifestyle, to imagine brawling and living outside the law. But when you get down to it, maybe it’s for the best that those guys didn’t really die, and maybe it’s ok to be a clever kid instead of Johnny Rotten.
Certain Songs slows things down, and it marks the feature debut of Franz Nicolay’s piano playing – a key sonic element in the albums that follow Almost Killed Me. Certain Songs not only foreshadows the Hold Steady’s future; it also raises the question: Do the band’s heartfelt ballads bring the momentum to a halt?
We talk about how Certain Songs’ “piano man” balladeering fits on the album, whether slow songs are acceptable for hard-rock Hold Steady fans, and what it means that Craig Finn’s lyrics spotlight a woman for the first time on the album. We also draw on canonic cultural works like…checks notes…The OC to explain why drawing on Billy Joel, Meatloaf, and the more populist side of rock and roll is effective, at least in this case.
Here’s the episode itself.
You can also subscribe to the show at all of these places:
And leave us a review or a rating on Apple or Stitcher if you can!
Here are a few categories and things to listen for, in the song itself and in our podcast:
Best Line in the song: They got coaxed out by a certain perfect ratio – just a lovely depiction of youth and following the crowd.
Things we learn about the Hold Steady’s musical taste: Billy Joel and Meatloaf at least play a nominal role in their universe, as a stand in for certain songs, for memories and nostalgia.
D4, as in the Dillinger Four, the legendary 90s Minneapolis punk band, also get a nod, and they more directly influence The Hold Steady’s sound and ethic.
Most foreshadowing moment: “Hard drugs are for the bartenders” will recur in “Cattle and the Creeping Things” on the Hold Steady’s next album, Separation Sunday. One of their best songs, and that line was the first stake in the ground for their album to album intertextuality.
A geographic note: While there are no specific place names shouted out, Craig sings about the east coast and the west coast. The west coast (and Colorado) go through the wringer in the bonus tracks, but this seems like a pretty positive if hedonistic depiction of the place – screwing in the surf and going out to shows. Or does that say something about our taste?
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.
This spectrum basically exists because of “Certain Songs”, at least as far as this album goes. Namedropping Billy Joel and Meatloaf? Check. Piano as the lead instrument? We’ve got that. Evoking memory, both musical and social? You bet. Hard to get more on the Bruce/Billy side of the scale than this track, at least in the early Hold Steady era.
Biggest question: Which flow is better, from Most People Are DJs’ guitar solo cutting off to the hi-hat/bass drum clip to start Certain Songs, or Certain Songs’ build fading away right before “Knuckles” jumps in?
Pop culture and nostalgia: Almost Killed Me came out when we were in college. The ‘00s are going through the nostalgia cycle these days. We drew on The OC, a more popular but less timeless piece of ‘00s pop culture. And “Certain Songs” is all about how songs from our past stick with us. Are these messages eternal, do we all just fall back to what we were listening to when we were in high school and college, becoming fully formed (more or less) adults?
(“Certain Songs” is nothing if not a catalyst for pensive thinking).
Review of the week: A shout out to Ryan Trim, who sent us a nice word on twitter.com:
