In 2010, The Hold Steady\u2019s Heaven Is Whenever<\/i> closed with \u201cA Slight Discomfort.\u201d The newly released Teeth Dreams<\/i> is a massive discomfort.<\/p>\n
I mean that in the best possible way. The band\u2019s first album in four years, Teeth Dreams<\/i> is the band\u2019s Gandalf the White moment: they have returned following a tumultuous absence and they are Not. Messing. Around.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s an album about anxiety, uncertainty and transition from a band intimately acquainted with the territory. The years following Heaven Is Whenever<\/i> saw the departure of multi-instrumentalist Franz Nikolai, the addition of guitarist Steve Selvidge, a label change (from Vagrant to Razor & Tie), and the release of singer Craig Finn\u2019s solo album.\u00a0In the album\u2019s press notes, guitarist Tad Kubler admits, \u201cI can honestly say, there was a period of about two years where I believed this would be the last record Craig and I would make together.\u201d<\/p>\n
After an era of upheaval, it would\u2019ve been understandable for the band to retreat to the blanket-fort of familiarity. But Teeth Dreams<\/i> veers in the opposite direction, and it\u2019s what makes the album both a challenge and a thrill.\u00a0It\u2019s not a departure but an evolution: it\u2019s bigger and tighter, harder and starker. It\u2019s an album unafraid to explore darkness.\u00a0One of Teeth Dreams<\/i>\u2019 most striking themes is how anything \u2013 lives, bands, relationships, stale cigarettes, and yeah, the occasional molar \u2013 can and very well may crumble. It\u2019s an unexpected turn for a band known for raucous paeans to killer parties.\u00a0But listeners who follow the band down this particular alley will discover an album that\u2019s richly satisfying and occasionally exhilarating.<\/p>\n
The music, written largely by Kubler, is obscenely high-caliber. Tight and self-assured, it thrums and roars and devours each turn like a souped-up muscle car. It\u2019s more streamlined than shambling, with fewer quirks and harder focus than previous albums. This is brainy, post-graduate rock, full of masterful (yet never self-indulgent) flourishes. And on Teeth Dreams<\/i>, it\u2019s front and center.\u00a0<\/p>\n
This is also the most equitable Hold Steady release to date. The Hold Steady\u2019s early output often consisted of Finn yowling rapid-fire wordscapes OVER the band. And \u2013 given the formidable chops of everyone involved \u2013 the result was amazing. But by Heaven Is Whenever<\/i>, it was also well-trampled territory. Over the years, the juxtaposition of music and lyrics has slowly shifted from parallel to tandem. Finn\u2019s words are a bit subtler and less bombastic this time around.\u00a0Conspicuously absent are the usual cast of fictional miscreants (Holly, Gideon, and Charlemagne) wreaking gleeful havoc across the Midwest. While sparser, Finn\u2019s lyrics remain terrific, an inventive, evocative antidote to bland songwriting. It\u2019s occasionally frustrating that the vocals on Teeth Dreams<\/i> are mixed low and augmented with unnecessary echo because it\u2019s hard to appreciate an excellent lyricist when the lyrics are barely audible.<\/p>\n
The album roars to life with the initial single, \u201cI Hope This Whole Thing Didn’t Frighten You,\u201d a track that doesn’t grab so much as shove. It\u2019s as hard charging and gritty as a pre-Giuliani Central Park but not quite cohesive enough to reach anthemic heights.\u00a0\u201cOn With The Business\u201d melds that same cocky intensity with a snaky, propulsive main riff and rapid-fire wordplay (\u201cChemistry currency plastic and magic \/ Come on everybody, let\u2019s get on with the business\u201d). In the release notes, Kubler says, \u201cthere\u2019s something absolutely sinister about this song.\u201d There\u2019s something ferociously compelling about it, too.<\/p>\n
Teeth Dreams<\/i>\u2019s center is anchored by a duo of stellar tracks. \u00a0The sly \u201cBig Cig\u201d is one of the album\u2019s newest sounding tracks. A wonderfully grungy bass line, a slick little guitar solo and a breezy, instantly shoutable chorus (\u201c<\/i>I serve my purpose\u2026burns on her skirt and smoke in her eyes \/ I serve my purpose\u2026we power down and try to socialize\u201d) fuse together in an epic ode to anxiously pining after a gorgeous train wreck.\u00a0\u201cWait A While\u201d is a huge, decadent slice of arena rock (and unexpectedly tender anti-rebound anthem), with components that click so smoothly that it instantly sounds like it\u2019s being played at its own reunion show.<\/p>\n
The album\u2019s second single, \u201cSpinners,\u201d is the most archetypal Hold Steady cut. It\u2019s catchy, danceable, and dizzyingly joyous. Kubler\u2019s guitar work is slick and shimmery as wet chrome and Finn\u2019s lyrics perfectly capture the awkward bravery of flinging yourself headfirst at the city night after night.<\/p>\n
Nestled between more boisterous tracks, the album\u2019s quieter, slow-burning songs are less consistent. Although the plaintive twang of \u201cThe Only Thing\u201d is promising, the various elements take too long to twine together. \u201cThe Ambassador\u201d is a woozy barroom ballad enlivened by the arrival of a distortion pedal and a hallelujah-like organ bridge. The stripped-down \u201cAlmost Everything,\u201d however, is wistful and lovely; it unfolds with the contemplative yearning of a hungover Sunday (\u201c<\/i>Sat in the back of the theater \/ Just drinking and talking \/ About movies and Krishna and hardcore and Jesus and joy\u201d).<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a torch song for burned-out torches. It\u2019s the drone of a guitar dematerializing molecule by molecule into nothingness. It\u2019s a montage of someone drinking himself to death as his bar stool companions slowly\u2026 drift\u2026 away. It\u2019s \u201cOaks,\u201d Teeth Dreams<\/i>\u2019s final track, and it may be the first Hold Steady song to make you cry while completely sober. Hold Steady closing tracks traditionally start slow and build to a transcendent climax. Only this time, it\u2019s not one of hope and joy, but of grief and permanence. \u201cOaks\u201d is simultaneously the saddest and most striking song the band has produced, a work as vast and somber as an abandoned aircraft hangar. It contains multiple movements, a gorgeous, keening, \u201cNovember Rain\u201d-esque guitar solo, grating backup fuzz, and haunting lyrics (\u201cThere were days from last week \/ I couldn’t quite complete \/ Skipped ahead to the next afternoon…\u201d). \u00a0Kubler says that, when composing \u201cOaks,\u201d \u201cI wanted to have a track ready to close out the album that would sound like things weren\u2019t ever going to be the same.\u201d<\/p>\n
Things probably won\u2019t<\/i> ever be the same. Things change. People change. Entropy creeps along our baseboards. Teeth Dreams<\/i> embraces this and rides it like a janky subway car. It\u2019s not just a solid rock record. \u00a0It\u2019s also a musical time-lapse sequence, the culmination of four years of growth and change, with all the slow-unfurling energy of metamorphosis condensed into a single compelling burst. Transition\u2019s a scary thing, but when it sounds this good, you might as well open the windows, crank the stereo and face it head-on.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":71,"featured_media":31878,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[8202],"rating":[5613],"class_list":["post-43601","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-the-hold-steady","rating-rating-a-minus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/43601","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/71"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43601"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/43601\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31878"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43601"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=43601"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=43601"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}