Joy, Rock, and Teaching: The Hold Steady’s ‘Heaven is Whenever’

“Rock Problems,” the fifth track off of The Hold Steady’s fifth studio album, Heaven Is Whenever, is a comic look at the problems of rock success: “Isn’t this what we wanted? / Some major rock ‘n’ roll problems?” From the first time I heard it, I’ve been pretty sure this song is about ProfHacker: The move to The Chronicle has been accompanied by some gnashing of teeth, both on Twitter and elsewhere, about various changes, both real (partial RSS feeds) and imagined (the site’s content might change, or become paywalled). Readers who care that much about a site? Now *that* is a rock ‘n’ roll problem.

My crazed love for The Hold Steady is a long-standing joke on ProfHacker, but they really are a perfect band for the site, emphasizing positivity [YouTube], a unified scene [YouTube], and the communal joy of rock music. (I have no patience for those who find no joy in the daily practice of academic life, or who can’t find a way to recognize that joy. More on this in a couple of weeks.)

All of The Hold Steady’s albums are about loss. The classic example is from Boys and Girls in America, when [YouTube] Holly’s “in the hospital, not far from that bar where we met,” “inconsolable because she can’t get as high as she got on that first night.” Heaven Is Whenever is no different. “The Sweet Part of the City” looks back at a time when the speaker lived in “the part with the bars and restaurants.” In “The Smidge,” “we used to want it all / now we just want a little bit.” “The Weekenders” is about, roughly, the couple from “Chips Ahoy” [YouTube] seeing if they can work their old magic again–although “It’s not gonna be like in romantic comedies: In the end I bet no one learns a lesson.”

But the albums are also about fraught possibility, and about the inspiration that is rock. And Heaven Is Whenever delivers the goods here, too. The title track of the album is “We Can Get Together”: “Heaven is whenever / We can get together / Lock your bedroom door / And listen to your records.” “Hurricane J” provided the epigraph to one of the first ProfHacker posts on the Chronicle: “You know I’ll never ask you to change/ I’ll only ask you try.” This perspective comes most clearly into focus in the refrain to “Our Whole Lives”: “We’re good guys, but we can’t be good our whole lives.” The song begins by hatching a plan: “Tonight we’re gonna have a really good time, / But I want to go to heaven on the day I die / Gonna make like a pre-emptive strike / Hit the 5.30 mass early Saturday night.” (This is an early candidate for my 6-year-old’s favorite song on the album–”Dad, I’m a good boy, but I can’t be good *all* the time.” His all-time favorite song by The Hold Steady, of course, is “Ask Her for Some Adderall.” All young children should listen to songs about study drugs.)

Obviously, I’m a little lyric-centred, but the new album has a lot to love musically, too. The departure of keyboardist Franz Nicolay means that the sound is more guitar-orientated, which hearkens back to the band’s earliest albums in some ways. But there’s also a countryish-song (“The Sweet Part of the City”) and “Barely Breathing” is like nothing in the THS canon, with a skittering, spooky sound. Mostly, though, the band sounds like itself: Powerful rock music that sounds best loud.

I’d say that Heaven Is Whenever is probably their third best album: Not a stone classic like Separation Sunday or Boys and Girls in America, but probably better than Almost Killed Me or Stay Positive (both of which also have many joys). You will spend all summer playing “The Weekenders,” “Barely Breathing,” “Slight Discomfort,” “Hurricane J,” “The Smidge,” “Touchless” (bonus pre-order track from iTunes), and “Our Whole Lives,” at a minimum.

Since ProfHacker’s all institutional and corporate now, I had my doubts about posting this review. But it’s still our blog, and I’d've posted this on the old site. So. Plus, in one of those coincidences that make you believe in the internet, Merlin Mann, who I’m proud to think of as a friend, said on Saturday:

In addition to being cool and very weird guys, dudes like Kurt Bloch and Jonathan Richman—like anyone from Craig Finn to Chris Murphy to Richard Thompson to Gregg Gillis to Bruce Springsteen to Bob Pollard to any of my other heroes—understand why rock and roll is there. What it’s for. How it runs on some secret mix of unresolvably kinetic energy and impossible affections.

Such coincidences are ignored at one’s peril, so the review’s going up. In comments, rather than debate The Hold Steady’s merits, if you’ve got an “impossible affection” for another band, let’s hear that. As another, closely-related band [YouTube] says every show, Let There Be Rock. You know?

Since it’s the end of the semester, I’ll just close with an “annual reminder / We could all be something bigger”:

Image by me. Creative Commons licensed.