Vagrant Records
2006
Boys And Girls In America
About This Album
"There are nights when I think Sal Paradise was right/'Boys and Girls in America have such a sad time together....'" These are the opening words to "Stuck Between Stations," the first cut from Boys and Girls in America, the Hold Steady's third full-length. Before these, however, are piano lines and glockenspiel sounds that could have come from Bruce Springsteen's Born to Run album and guitar lines that could have been spit out of an AC/DC song. Sal Paradise, Kerouac's big character, is not the only mythical presence on this meditation of darkly romanticized youth. The late poet (and suicide) John Berryman and one of his monolithic works Dream Songs is in here too: "...I surround myself with doctors and deep thinkers/but big heads with soft bodies make for lousy lovers..." Ain't that the truth. (He should have talked to Chuck Berry instead.) In the meantime, Craig Finn's spilling out an encounter and meditation, and the first person part of his narrative reveals "a damn good kisser and she wasn't that strict of a Christian/She was a real good dancer but she wasn't much of a girlfriend." This is the set up for the slickest, catchiest, and most focused collection of songs by Finn and his rocking Brooklyn quintet.
Track List (try tracks 1,2,3,4,5,6,7 and 8)

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