The Hold Steady: Steadily sincere music for a new age

Hello, and welcome to the first Night Watch of the Earnest Age! Your band for the next four years will be the Hold Steady.

The miasma of irony and cynicism that darkened so much art during the Bush Administration was lifted on Nov. 4. As anyone who ventured into the streets of Seattle witnessed that night, unabashed sincerity reigned.

The Hold Steady was making unabashedly sincere rock 'n' roll well before this election, though. They released three albums of full-throttle, guitar-centric paeans to growing up in America, getting high in America, coming down in America. Around the time of 2006's "Boys and Girls in America" (the members of the Hold Steady are from Minneapolis originally, and Brooklyn currently — respective physical and artistic centers of the country — and their music dwells in a very specific sense of place), many a critic proclaimed them the nation's best band. Rolling Stone, AOL, Blender, Esquire, Maxim — for what it's worth, writers from each struggled valiantly to plant the Hold Steady banner atop the shifting heap of modern rock.

This past summer's "Stay Positive" — another heart-swelling, fist-pumping album of youthful aspiration, blue-collar determination and inevitable redemption — helped the cause. So does a virtually nonstop touring schedule that sees the band playing more than 200 shows a year (including two at the Showbox SoDo Thursday and next Friday, with Alabama's the Drive-by Truckers; all ages, bar with ID, $26.50-$30). Problem was, there was no place for them in the Age of Irony (RIP).

As of Nov. 4, the band no longer need suffer perpetual underdog status. What will catapult the Hold Steady into the mainstream is posterity: Obama's America is shaping up to be as earnest and hopeful as the Hold Steady's music. Ideally, the two will form a more perfect union — as ratified by the honorable Bruce Springsteen, a self-proclaimed fan and provider of the Obama Administration's current soundtrack — that will stamp out irony across the globe.

"Certainly that was something I had as a goal of this band from day one — just to kinda not be ironic, be from the heart," says 37-year-old lead singer Craig Finn from Niagara, N.Y. "I'm sitting in the tour bus right now talking to you, but this was never a goal. The goal was to play shows and have fun.

"The shows right now are getting really, noticeably bigger, too, so it's hard to know how far it'll go," he adds.

More craftsman than poet ("If you really start to read his stuff, he's not so much a participant as he is a recordist," he says of Jack Kerouac, one of his favorite authors), Finn would rather discuss the mechanics of writing dense, narrative songs that deal with real life in real terms.

"Stories are concerned often with highs and lows, and with drugs and alcohol, we manufacture our own highs and lows sometimes," he says. "I really think our songs, while they do often deal with drugs and alcohol, I intend them to be cautionary. I try to write about the hangover for every high I write about.

"A lot of it is from being younger and dumb-

er, too," he continues. "I feel like at 19 or 20 you're old enough to have a car and a little bit of money in your pocket, but you're still young enough to do some really stupid things. There's this great period that people are in that allows them to make their big mistakes or do the dumbest stuff."

And as for the brilliant flourish of personal detail that renders his lyrics the rock 'n' roll equivalent of Raymond Carver prose: "If I do have one talent in my life, it is my memory. I have not met anyone with a better memory than me."

Suggestion to President-elect Obama: Add the Hold Steady to the inaugural roster. This is their time, too.

Plus you and the band have something in common, sort of. Says Finn, "I think due to our age, and maybe somewhat our looks, a lot of our audience is rooting for us in a way that they don't for another band."

Other must-see shows this week:

Sunday

The Hold Steady aside, I remain steadfast in my claim that Fishbone is the greatest live band on the planet (all ages; 7:30 p.m. Tuesday at El Corazon; $16-$18).

Tuesday

The Seattle music community is supportive to the core. This week, some of the city's best bands — the Maldives, the Moondoggies, Final Spins, the Banyans and Grand Hallway — come together in a benefit for Jamie Spiess of Husbands Love Your Wives, who recently incurred some major medical bills (8 p.m. Tuesday at the Sunset Tavern; $8 suggested donation).

Jonathan Zwickel: zwickelicious@gmail.com