The Hold Steady holds forth, and fans drink it up

[Correspondent Charlie Amter, subbing for your under-the-weather host, files this report from Thursday's night's packed show at the El Rey Theatre:]

Ivy League-educated men in their 30s still like to rock, and Craig Finn is their point man. The Hold Steady front man proved a deft master of ceremonies Thursday, owning the El Rey’s stage as an axe-wielding front man and Midwest storyteller extraordinaire. The Brooklyn-based (via Minneapolis) band kicked things off with “Stuck Between Stations” off of their critically lauded 2006 disc "Boys and Girls in America." 

Finn, looking not unlike a bearded, bespectacled and crazed street preacher on crystal meth, immediately commenced gesticulating wildly in time with the music. The crowd, probably 75% of them men, ate it up and sang along. With very little prodding, Finn had nearly the entire front section of the El Rey (the show was sold out and had been for weeks prior to their sole L.A. engagement) clapping in time with the music -- hands over their head. One guy stage-dove.

But Hold Steady fans are a heady (or perhaps just drunk?) bunch.  Listening to the Hold Steady is a lot like reading a book -- but it’s topical and immediate and resonant, with Finn’s uncanny ear for nailing hipster idiomatic expressions put to a soundtrack of late 1980s/early 1990s rock in the Afghan Whigs/Soul Asylum vein. And just because Finn can name-drop Tennyson on a track (see “Chillout Tent”) doesn’t mean his posse can’t party.  I’d be willing to bet the bar receipts at the El Rey were higher than at any show so far this year.

Earlier this year, NPR said the Hold Steady "might just be the best bar band in America." You wondered, after Thursday night, why the writer even bothered with the "might."

||| Download a live version of "Stuck Between Stations."