The Hold Steady Band • Page 10

One of those records I pull out every year around this time when the weather starts to warm up. Something about "Stuck Between Stations" just sounds like summer to me.

 

Hell yeah

 

Teeth Dreams is bad but that’s the producer’s fault

 

Do you guys have a top 5 songs? I can’t rank them but these are unquestionably mine:

Constructive Summer
How a Resurrection Really Feels
Slapped Actress
Stevie Nix
Stuck Between Stations

 

Haven’t put a ton of thought into it, but I’d have to say (in no order):

Killer Parties
Stevie Nix
First Night
You Can Make Them Like You
Magazines

There’s probably another five that I could swap in though depending on my mood

 

Stuck Between Stations
Your Little Hoodrat Friend
First Night
Constructive Summer
The Swish

 

Slapped Actress
Stay Positive
How a Resurrection
Southtown Girls
Constructive Summer

Honorable Mention - Two Handed Handshake

 

Stevie Nixxx
Weekenders
The Swish
Slapped Actress
Banging Camp

but almost every song of theirs is enjoyable to great.

 

Man, only 5 is so hard. Off the top of my head:

The Swish
Slapped Actress
Stevie Nix
Constructive Summer
Stuck Between Stations

Lot of S’s haha

 

Their newest record is amazing

 

Their newest is great I’ll always wonder what it would’ve been like had they not released the majority of it ahead of time lol

 

Franz’s return made such a huge positive impact. Cannot be understated. The joy in their songs is back with this album.

 

Any love for "Oaks", though? That solo section at the end blows me away every time!

 

I still kinda love Teeth Dreams. I mean I wish it didn't sound like that but a lot of these songs...man

 

What was the major complaint with its sound? Honestly, from a production standpoint, Stay Positive is the worst sounding record in their catalog. Everything is insanely dull and compressed. But, like Bruce Springsteen's Magic, the songs are so good its completely worth overlooking. The 3xLP reissue / remaster fixed this quite a bit, but its still not ideal.

I never felt that way about Teeth Dreams. So, just wondering what people didn't like about it?

 

to me it sounds like it was recorded in a train tunnel and then polished to hell. everything is simultaneously like so clean sounding and also so far away it all kind of melds together. it's got a kind of radio rock sound I don't think works at all with the songs

 

I don't like how Craig's vocals are mixed on Teeth Dreams. Even the new stuff sounds a bit "off" from a production/mixing standpoint.

 

I'm probably due to revisit their whole catalog. I'll have to pay attention to it. It didn't stick out to me on this album, but I agree with @cherrywaves that things sound "off" on the newer stuff... and his solo stuff to a lesser extent.

I think it is all probably an artifact of trying to take a great live band and capture / reproduce that live bar-band feel in the studio. It seems that regardless of the budget, it never works the way it is intended. (Bruce Springsteen's The River, for example... great record, but everything just sounds thin.) And its probably why Stay Positive sounds so loud and flat and other later records sound "off".

 

I like all the songs on Stay Positive but I have never really felt like it holds together particularly well as an album

 

I think one or two songs could have been left off, the track listing ordered slightly differently and Ask Her For Adderall absolutely should have been included! They play it at like every show! How did that not make the record but a song like, Navy Sheets for example, did!?

 

"Ask Her for Adderall" is one of their best songs. I've never been a particularly big fan of "One for the Cutters"

 

One For The Cutters is super-strange. It definitely doesn't belong so early on the album, if at all.

 

this is how I feel about the production on “heaven is whenever”. Some really good songs in there I just don’t like the way it sounds so rarely revisit it