The Hold Steady

Can Our Christian Rock Band Leave the God Ghetto For A Secular Career in Indie Rock?

Are you a musician? Is your group having issues? Ask Fan Landers! Critic Jessica Hopper has played in and managed bands, toured internationally, booked shows, produced records, worked as a publicist, and is the author of The Girls' Guide to Rocking, a how-to for teen ladies. She is here to help you ... More >>

Paying Tribute To Archers Of Loaf: "Even If I Had Two Other Hands, I Couldn't Count My Favorite Archers Songs On Them"

​In this week's Voice, we looked at the history of Archers Of Loaf, the storied North Carolina indie outfit that recently got back together for a run of shows and reissues. Below, some quotes from Archers frontman Eric Bachmann that couldn't fit into the Voice's print edition; members of Band ... More >>

The Truck America Festival: Wye Oak, Okkervil River, And The Hold Steady, All In One Place Upstate

​Those of you who want to extend your summer past Labor Day might do well to check out the Truck America festival, a three-day music/comedy outing at the Full Moon Resort in Big Indian, N.Y., that has so far booked Baltimore bliss duo Wye Oak, as well as Okkervil River, the Hold Steady, and Ra ... More >>

Rob Harvilla's Top 10 Singles of 2010

​Not every great song this year was released by Katy Perry. From a snarling avant-electro NPR lecture to a haunted-house posse cut to a ludicrously profane viral sensation, here are 10 examples. "Teenage Dream" might still be better than all of these, though. Better get this started before I c ... More >>

Was 2010 The Best Year For Music Ever? Defending Taylor Swift And Hailing The-Dream

Welcome to Sound of the City's year-in-review rock-critic roundtable, an amiable ongoing conversation between five prominent Voice critics: Rob Harvilla, Zach Baron, Sean Fennessey, Maura Johnston, and Rich Juzwiak. We'll be here all week! Happier times for us all​My friends, It's the confl ... More >>

The Hold Steady Are Playing At the Apple Store In A Few Hours

"Can I get some service on this iPhone, please?" Photo by Rob Trucks.​Local bar-rock heroes and Minnesota Twins fans (sorry about that) the Hold Steady have been playing great shows in New York for so long, and with such regularity, that you occasionally start to take them for granted. Until, ... More >>

Q&A: Against Me!'s Tom Gabel on Anarchists, Anti-Abortion Billboards, Alternative Press Magazine

tkTom is the one in black. Against Me! leader Tom Gabel is the sort of lyricist that can't stop himself from contemplating the folly of Robert McNamara's foreign policy decisions mid-song, and he's the sort of singer that can find a way to make the former Secretary of Defense's quirky name positive ... More >>

Buffalo Tom

This Weekend! The Hold Steady, Neon indian w/ Moby, Joshua Light Show w/ Silver Apples, Golden Triangles, The National, Crystal Stilts, Dr. Dog, Deer Tick, Postelles, Wild Yaks, And Much Much More

The Hold Steady, our favorite group of "wizened and wistful" meta-rock daddies (or "lowbrow bar rockers," your pick), perform tonight as part of WNYC's "Soundcheck" program" at the Greene Space. Then, abruptly setting aside all wisdom/wistfulness, the night plunges into a DJ-set orgy: Neon Indian ... More >>

Thank You Jesus: New York Magazine's Ever-Maddening "Jukebox" Feature Has Returned!

​We here at SOTC miss no chance to heap opprobrium on the otherwise sterling New York arts-coverage empire's woeful, mercifully intermittent civilian-rock-criticism column, Jukebox, wherein three randomly chosen, achingly hip Joe-the-Yoga-Instructor everyday New Yorkers toss out neat little on ... More >>

This Week's Voice: The Hold Steady, Flying Lotus, Daddy Yankee In Space, and the Return of the Jazz Rent Party

Flying Lotus, yet another outstanding cultural accessory to smoking weed. Photo by Timothy Saccenti​In this week's Village Voice, Rob Harvilla writes the definitive piece on the Hold Steady's newest, Heaven Is Whenever, while Mike Powell explains the omnivorous electronic headphone music of L. ... More >>

This Week In The Voice: The NYPD Tapes

​Who knows what goes on behind the closed doors, locked file cabinets, and day-to-day routines of the NYPD? Other than them, nobody. Which is one of the reasons why one of New York's Finest saw fit to record his life among their ranks, and shed light on some of the darker aspects of those who ... More >>

Week in Review: Listen to Them Goddamn Drums

​In the week SOTC blood kin Christopher R. Weingarten swore up an absolute storm in defense of music criticism, we memorialized his cascades of profanity in a very special video edit, then rode out on the battlefield once more to sort out the critical scrum that broke out in the speech's wake. ... More >>

This Weekend! Kaki King, Jesse Murphy In The Woods, Real Estate, The Hold Steady, Telepathe, Trans Am, Liars, Ho-Ag, And Reverend Billy & The Life After Shopping Gospel Choir

Kaki King all tied up​ It was no small feat when Kaki King became the first woman to make Rolling Stone's "Guitar God" list in 2006 -- so don't pass up a chance to bask in her fret-tapping, slap-bass glory at the Bowery Ballroom. Then, Webster Hall wards off pervs and creeps with Jesse Murphy ... More >>

New Hold Steady: "The Weekenders"

​So, if you're keeping track, the Hold Steady's promotional plan for Heaven Is Whenever seems pretty clear at this point--premieres at the clip of about one song per week, streaming on a variety of blogs and websites that now include Pitchfork, Vulture, and today, MTV's excellent Buzzworthy Bl ... More >>

On the Hold Steady's Soon-To-Be Live Anthem, "Rock and Roll Problems"

​So if you're assembling your Heaven Is Whenever checklist, we've already got the elegy-for-a-fallen-scenestress, "Hurricane J," the vaguely mournful, piano-assisted theme-setting ballad; up next in the cosmology, if past Hold Steady records/promotional campaigns are to be trusted, is the song ... More >>

Week in Review: DIY Snitchin

We bleed for this thing. Photo by Rebecca Smeyne.​In the week Jay-Z went all the way to the top of the singles list on our 2009 Pazz & Jop Critics' Poll, the rapper told SOTC that his two favorite songs of last year both came from Kings of Leon. With an honorable mention tip of the cap to the ... More >>

Farewell, the Hold Steady's Franz Nicolay

Nicolay, saying goodbye to the band but never to the mustache.​Oh wow, keyboardist Franz Nicolay just quit the Hold Steady: "You should know," he wrote on his website yesterday. "I've left The Hold Steady. I told the band I'd be leaving in early September, played my last show with them in Minn ... More >>

Week in Review: Pull a Monster Out of Your Soul

Goodbye to all that, I guess. Photo of These Are Powers by Rebecca Smeyne.​In the week our F2K crew got within three wretched singles of revealing all 50 worst songs of the decade, we learned what giant, raging purple erections in cargo shorts would say if they could speak. (Probably something ... More >>

Week in Review: And All the While, My Peers Dance and Snort Cheap Coke and Photograph Each Other for the Hundreth Time

This is why this man gets work with FOX News. Fucked Up photo by Rebecca Smeyne.​In the week everybody dressed like some version of themselves from 15 years ago--or just said fuck it and went all in and pretended to be a giant bag of cocaine--we killed worthless punk nostalgia dead at that Vic ... More >>

At Last, the Answer to the "Which Jawbreaker Song Would the Hold Steady Put on a Mixtape?" Question

​It's "Fireman." Our guess would've been "Bad Scene Everybody's Fault," but what do we know? That's a "mixtape shirt" up there, by the way, customized and signed by the Hold Steady's Tad Kubler, currently on auction (via Insound) to benefit 826NYC. There's also an Of Montreal one; further edit ... More >>

Tonight! Northside Festival, Fleetwood Mac, Meat Puppets

The first inaugural Northside Festival brings CMJ-style pandemonium to Williamsburg and Greenpoint, starting tonight. Ewok Village-natives Naybob and Raybob Shineywater of Brightblack Morning Light headline the opening gala at Studio B. The Music Hall of Williamsburg's sold out Hold Steady show a ... More >>

NORTH BY NORTHSIDE

Brooklyn's block party needs badges, too

News Roundup: Paul McCartney, Live Nation, James Murphy, Hold Steady

--Paul McCartney hasn't performed much lately, favoring one-off gigs instead of touring. (In April, he performed a Beatles-heavy set at Coachella). But New York fans will get a chance to see the Wings legend (kidding) when he performs July 17 and 18 at Citi Field, the Mets' new home. McCartney has ... More >>

News Roundup: Brendan Flowers, Live Nation, Neutral Milk Hotel, Chris Brown/Rihanna

--The Killers' Brendan Flowers likely got to live out a childhood fantasy Saturday when he joined Bruce Springsteen for a duet of "Thunder Road" at the opening night of the Neatherlands Pinkpop Festival. Nowadays, it's a right of passage for Springsteen-influenced acts to join their idol onstage. Th ... More >>

Week in Review: We Got Arrested at Your Benefit Show

In the short week that we outsourced absolutely nothing to India (not even the phoner we didn't do with the guy who plays trumpet for Cake), we got even less cosmopolitan and global when Cannes correspondent J. Hoberman came back and showed up at the office like the rest of us. Except, unlike him, w ... More >>

The Hold Steady Cover the Mountain Goats

As indie-rock love affairs go, the one between Craig Finn and John Darnielle is one of the best: Finn's "Girls Like Status" memorably namechecked the Mountain Goats' "This Year," and Darnielle has been known to sub in the Hold Steady's name on "Best Ever Death Metal Band Out of Denton," to pretty ... More >>

Week in Review: Music About Being Young from the Perspective of People Who Are Middle-Aged

In the week we talked Charlie Gibson into saying our name, twice, we apparently made fun of the Hold Steady for being middle-aged, although that wasn't really exactly what we meant to say. Right wingers still really hate Janeane Garofalo, huh? Other interviews: Smog's Bill Callahan on his new Somet ... More >>

New Asobi Seksu Video, O'Death Mixtape, and Tonight's Brooklyn Vs. Baltimore Show Was Moved

Sound of the City roots for the home team and so does Impose Magazine's Jeremy Krinsley. Impose is having a birthday party show on Saturday at Cake Shop. It's free if you were born in January. O'Death mixtape. Unfortunately this doesn't include yodeling diss tracks aimed at Akron/Family. On that ... More >>

Notes on the Biz (What's Left of It)

On metal, genre-based critical bias, layoffs, industry hysteria, and the Loudness Wars

Meet the Web Sheriff

Fighting music piracy via ominous blog comments and pre-written apologies

ROCK TO ROLL

Jesse Malin's holiday revue addresses hearts and asses

SHE

Rock & roll remains the Truckers' elusive lover

This Week's Voice: Ice-T and Richard Hell on the Election, They Might Be Giants, Craig Finn, Zack and Miri Make a Porno, and More

John Berryman, Muse to The Hold Steady: Not News, Barely True

Hugs and Kisses #44: Everett True's Moving, Plus the Twits

Is Sellout Even a Dirty Word Anymore?

Spankin' Pop? No, It's Pazz & Jop!

One Day It Will Please Us to Remember Even These

Random obsessions and vexations, born of both young tyros and inexplicably still-rocking old people

Bob, Barkley, and Beyond: The Top 20

The poll's upper echelons drive us crazy, or at least drive us to drink

Living With War

Stuff You Need to Know This Week to Avoid Ostracism

Hip-Hop's New No Wave

Downtown's odd relationship with rap bravado continues this fall—now with Muppet costumes

Second Hand Dose

Hand-me-down rock-qua-rock bands flatter via imitation

Listening in Real Time

Eclectic neoclassicism versus childhood-oriented avant-primitivism as global warming swamps our history

She's Not Your Steppin' Stone

He was a punk, she did ballet, now he's an indie boy and her week outpunks his year

Thousands Left Extremely Tired After CMJ

Prefab 8-Track Muscle-Car Classics for Indie Kids and Country Fans

Music

Movin' Out

Nothin's cool, they found your father in the swimming pool