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In the six years since infectious frontman Craig Finn and guitarist Tad Kubler formed The Hold Steady out of the ashes of their previous band, Lifter Puller, their new project has repeatedly been labelled “the best bar-room band in America”. Whilst its clichéd use primarily indicates laziness on the part of journalists and bloggers, it is hard to avoid in light of the band’s obvious eagerness to wear the title on their sleeves.
The Hold Steady’s back catalogue is peppered with enthusiastic references to classic rock mainstays including Bruce Springsteen and Hüsker Dü, and their fifth studio album doesn’t buck the trend; they even name-check the latter on outstanding centre-piece ‘We Can Get Together’. As they add another distinctive offering to an increasingly large canon of albums linked by the same (apparently inexhaustible) lyrical theme – the rock ‘n’ roll and debauchery of their youth – their new songs speak more clearly of The Hold Steady themselves than any of their famed precursors.
Their last album, 2008’s Stay Positive, provided The Hold Steady's most marked musical development, as ominous organ and harpsichord parts added a noir-ish touch to some of their most individual character pieces yet. That progress seems to be attributable to moustachioed former keyboardist Franz Nicolai, whose presence is missed here. Although Heaven is Whenever doesn’t represent a backward step as such (the flourishes of jazz clarinet on ‘Barely Breathing’ blow that hypothesis right out of the water), the band, without Nicolai, stops short of wandering anywhere new. Instead, they produce a melange of their previous approaches.
To those fans and casual listeners uninterested in musical revolution (who must be plentiful, since the band customarily steers clear of anything approaching the avant-garde), this won’t be a concern. Press releases had suggested that they might move away from the singalong choruses that made them big, but that worry is scarcely realised on any of the 10 tracks: the killer riffs on ‘Hurricane J’ and ‘Rock Problems’ are up there with their finest. Even as the closing ballad ‘A Slight Discomfort’ lowers the pace, Heaven is Whenever remains joyful and immediate, and is bound to provide an apt soundtrack to the fast-arriving months of barbecues and beers.
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