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cheers, kid
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As someone who’s listened to the entire album and seen one of Franz’s solo I’d like to point out a few things. First, Jeff Penalty is the closest anything on Major General comes to sounding like THS. This kind of makes sense when you consider that it’s a song specifically about punk-rock, and that Franz is in fact a member of The Hold Steady. In my experience, good bands have people in them who are all on the same musical vibe, there’s at least less clashing of creative control (case in point would be the similarity between Death Cab’s albums and Chris Walla’s solo work).Second, Franz’s live shows are excellent, it’s just him, his banjo, his accordion, his guitar, and a bottle of wine. This is what really comes through the album as a whole. Lastly, Franz is a good songwriter. Sure, he’s not as good as Craig Finn, but neither are a whole lot of people who are praised by the readers of this blog. Major General is a decent album and Franz is supporting it with some fantastic live shows.
Stay Positive was totally a further evolution THS’s sound. If you can’t hear it, go listen to it again. Most obviously in the way they bravely involved a greater variety of instruments. Not to mention the incredibly Suf sounding vocal harmony breakdown in Two-Handed Handshake (I know it’s technically a bonus track). I think the reason it feels so regurgitated is because Craig took the opportunity to start making a LOT of connections lyrically to all three previous albums. There’s a reference in almost every other line. This was in absolutely no way a bad thing but it did blur the lines of distinction between the band’s albums.
Until you’ve seen these guys live it’s impossible to know the sheer power of Craig Finn. Best Frontman Ever.
I’m gonna be in heaven tomorrow night and The Hold Steady”s gonna put me there!
It is turned way down in the mix, but it’s not like he’s ever really claimed to be a guitarist or anything. He plays because it’s fun and when it helps it helps, and it doesn’t hurt anything.
In all seriousness Paul Gilbert (the lead guitarist) deserves some credit, although probably not from this song. I saw him when he was playing on the G3 tour last year and after seeing him play Satriani and Petrucci could go to hell as far as I was concerned. Great guitarist, and really cool guy too it seemed. I wish he was my uncle or something.
The “**I mess up the lyrics to sound cool**” dig was worth it.
Rostam is the new Panda Bear.
I’ve listened to Vampire Weekend, Arm’s Way, and The Unicorn’s and I liked it all. But I did like Vampire Weekend the most, which doesn’t say anything bad about Islands. But then when Nick starts making fairly nasty comments pegging VW as uncreative and claiming that he’s already done what they do and they’re not worth anyone’s time, he comes off like a prick who thinks he deserves more attention than anyone else. Bitter’s the wrong attitude.
BTW who else loves Ladies of Cambridge from VW’s MySpace Transmissions set?
M.I.A.’s awesome, and I have nothing against Rihanna, but since when did singing karaoke constitute a cover?
I agree with Jeff. Chris is already a fantastic drummer and although I like that they try to work guest performers into their appearances the drum line did absolutely nothing for me. Also, the band really clashed the with the whole style of cinematography that Jimmy uses in that garage of his, but that’s hardly their fault.
what I love is the fact that being pissed off about “snarky hipsterism” is the “hip” thing to do now. 
I think the album is stellar, especially as a sophomore release for these guys. I think that on Broken Boy Soldiers the guys kind of played it safe, the album was very focused musically as they tried out this whole supergroup thing, and it worked because they Absolutely Nailed! that 60s vibe. With Consolers they’re branching out a lot more and it’s anything but a retread of the first album which I’m incredibly grateful for. My only request I think would’ve been more lead vocals from Brendan, just because. I don’t think there’s really a bad song on the album, I think the difference between “demanding” songs from most other artists and “demanding” songs from Jack White are that Jack’s are catchy. The album’s a good 14 tracks long but it moves along at a pretty good clip, it doesn’t drag.
I love Ida Maria, but I’m going to have to agree with pretty much everyone else and say that this is awful. Iggy probably could’ve sounded pretty cool on this song if they’d arranged and recorded it with him originally, but instead they just cut and pasted a redub. The video however is entirely inexcusable. 0 Energy.