The Hollywood Reporter reports that Hold Steady frontman Craig Finn and Late Show With David Letterman scribe Tom Ruprecht are at work on writing and producing a movie version of Chuck Klosterman’s coming-of-age-with-metal memoir Fargo Rock City. But those of you expecting a movie that plumbed the depths of one teenager’s rotting cassette collection (with a really heaping dash of Catholic imagery) will be disappointed, since the flick is going to have the music content turned down and the outcast angst cranked up all the way: More »
I’m on some kind of Springsteen kick today, so I figured I’d keep the train rolling and talk about Jason Anderson. In a world where The Hold Steady are pretty huge and The Gaslight Anthem are up-and-comers, it seems unfair to me that the former Wolf Colonel/Mount Eerie/Yume Bitsu member is overlooked. Can’t the world support more earnest, anthemic rock acts like this?
Craig Finn chatted with ESPN.com readers (or at least dictated answers to their questions over a phone) to talk the Twins bullpen (it’s rough), why musicians often shy away from liking sports (old ideas of rebellion and mainstream culture in America), fishing with Kent Hrbek (“a great guy”), and… More »
Many people find it hard to tell the great from the godawful when it comes to 21st-century mainstream rock. To help figure out which is which, here’s “Corporate Rock Still Sells,” where Al “GovernmentNames” Shipley examines what’s good, bad, and ugly in the world of rock and roll. This time around, he holds a few recent blog-rock darlings up to the harsh light of commercial rock radio, and judges their potential for success:
Hold Steady guitarist Tad Kubler has caused the Internet to go nuts with his comments on Radiohead, which he made over the weekend to BBC6 Music. “I think they’ve lost the plot,” Kubler said when asked the now-standard-in-every-music-interview question about Thom Yorke et al’s recent album In Rainbows. “What are they doing? Where are they going? What’s happening? I don’t get it any more. They lost me. I still appreciate what they’re doing, or what they’re trying to do. But I think they’re trying too hard not to be Radiohead. That seems a little ridiculous to me.” Kubler then went on to praise… Oasis. Ooh, burn! Yorke and his bandmates were unavailable for comment, but the Internet was more than happy to rush in and fill that particular void.
The one about the Hold Steady playing a couple of shows in Europe as a support act for Counting Crows, or the one about the new Cure single featuring remixes by 30 Seconds To Mars’ Jared Leto, My Chemical Romance’s Gerard Way, AFI’s Jade E. Puget, and Fall Out Boy’s Pete Wentz and Patrick Stump? More »
Grrrl-rock standard-bearer Carrie Brownstein took to her blog to discuss a phenomena she witnessed at a Fleet Foxes show: the “strangely beautiful” phenomenon of bromance, “where mostly straight men show up to shows in small packs, high-fiving during songs, raising glasses at the band in a show of brotherly love, and shouting ‘I love you!’ toward the stage.” She asks the readers to comment with “bromantic” shows they’ve attended; while the Hold Steady seems to be the consensus pick as far as which band is inspires the most male-on-male admiration, most of the bands mentioned are linked by shared roots in ’70s rock. As a result, I’ve noticed at least two distinct types of “bromance”: for lack of a better nomenclature, I’ll call one folk/country bromance (exemplified, in Brownstein’s post, by the Fleet Foxes crowd) and the other bar-band bromance (seen among Hold Steady fans). This oft-overlooked distinction is important to understanding the phenomenon.
From time to time, we round up the all-important, all-summarizing last sentences of the biggest new-music reviews. This time around, we look at the critical reaction to the Hold Steady’s Stay Positive, which hits stores today.
