The Hold Steady celebrated their 20th anniversary on Saturday night with a hometown blowout in Brooklyn. It was a fittingly rowdy birthday bash for these guys. The Hold Steady might have started as Brooklyn’s finest bar band, dabbling in Last Waltz cosplay when they were barely into their thirties. But by now, they’ve been doing it even longer than The Band circa The Last Waltz. This band loves to revel in rock & roll rituals and fetishize the details, so they did this occasion right. It was exactly two decades after their first show,...
- 2/2/2023
- by Rob Sheffield
- Rollingstone.com
Craig Finn has characterized his last two albums with the Hold Steady–2010’s Heaven is Whenever and 2014’s Teeth Dreams–as creative low-points. Despite their bright spots, those records sometimes felt as though the group was suffering from the age-old rock & roll problem: how does a band grow up and still maintain its sense of self?
On Thrashing Thru the Passion, the Hold Steady’s first record in five years, and their first with keyboardist Franz Nicolay in over a decade, the newly reconfigured sextet arrive at a simple answer:...
On Thrashing Thru the Passion, the Hold Steady’s first record in five years, and their first with keyboardist Franz Nicolay in over a decade, the newly reconfigured sextet arrive at a simple answer:...
- 8/16/2019
- by Jonathan Bernstein
- Rollingstone.com
We have arrived at the conference finals of the NBA playoffs, which means we're getting dangerously close to what could be one of the greatest Finals series of all time. In the Eastern Conference, the upset-minded Boston Celtics (having knocked out LeBron James' Cleveland Cavaliers) opened up their series against the Orlando Magic on Sunday (May 16) and took a quick 1-0 lead in the series with sturdy defense and a huge game from Ray Allen. In the Western Conference, the series kicks off tonight between the defending champion Los Angeles Lakers and the Phoenix Suns. While Ice Cube has naturally thrown his support behind the Lakers, the other side of the court will contain at least one famous member: The Hold Steady guitarist Tad Kubler, who will be rooting for the Suns this series.
However, the Brooklyn native isn't necessarily a Phoenix fan. He usually throws his support behind the New York Knicks,...
However, the Brooklyn native isn't necessarily a Phoenix fan. He usually throws his support behind the New York Knicks,...
- 5/17/2010
- by Kyle Anderson
- MTV Newsroom
Thursday (May 13) was a great day for birthdays, as "Twilight" vampire Robert Pattinson and former Hootie & the Blowfish frontman Darius Rucker both celebrated becoming one year older. The same went for former basketball star Dennis "The Worm" Rodman and late night host Stephen Colbert, who celebrated his 46th birthday by inviting the Hold Steady to play on his show "The Colbert Report."
Following riffs on new Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan and the ongoing psychosis of Glenn Beck, Colbert sat down with Hold Steady frontman Craig Finn and guitarist Tad Kubler (the same pair who chatted with MTV News two weeks ago). The main point of discussion was the title of the band's new album Heaven Is Whenever, which got into a surprisingly legitimate debate about the concept of the afterlife and Finn's lapsed Catholicism. "I still go to church," he told Colbert. "But I don't think the Pope would...
Following riffs on new Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan and the ongoing psychosis of Glenn Beck, Colbert sat down with Hold Steady frontman Craig Finn and guitarist Tad Kubler (the same pair who chatted with MTV News two weeks ago). The main point of discussion was the title of the band's new album Heaven Is Whenever, which got into a surprisingly legitimate debate about the concept of the afterlife and Finn's lapsed Catholicism. "I still go to church," he told Colbert. "But I don't think the Pope would...
- 5/14/2010
- by Kyle Anderson
- MTV Newsroom
'We wanted to make a more dynamic record, and I hope we did that,' guitarist Tad Kubler tells MTV News.
By Kyle Anderson
The Hold Steady's Craig Finn
Photo: MTV News
When they began in 2005, the Hold Steady set out to be the best bar band in the world. Over the course of four albums, they have steadily grown from a buzzed-about indie group playing tiny Brooklyn clubs to a world-traveling group that headlines festivals and fills theaters.
Though the Hold Steady traditionally put out an album a year, 2008's Stay Positive kept them on the road, where they visited Australia for the first time, played a massive number of festivals and opened dates for Dave Matthews Band and Counting Crows in Europe. It broke up their annual-lp pace for their fifth album, Heaven Is Whenever, which hit shelves Tuesday (May 4), but the extra time helped make the new album the group's "most musical,...
By Kyle Anderson
The Hold Steady's Craig Finn
Photo: MTV News
When they began in 2005, the Hold Steady set out to be the best bar band in the world. Over the course of four albums, they have steadily grown from a buzzed-about indie group playing tiny Brooklyn clubs to a world-traveling group that headlines festivals and fills theaters.
Though the Hold Steady traditionally put out an album a year, 2008's Stay Positive kept them on the road, where they visited Australia for the first time, played a massive number of festivals and opened dates for Dave Matthews Band and Counting Crows in Europe. It broke up their annual-lp pace for their fifth album, Heaven Is Whenever, which hit shelves Tuesday (May 4), but the extra time helped make the new album the group's "most musical,...
- 5/4/2010
- MTV Music News
[Photo by Sean Edgar] Just a month after keyboardist Franz Nicolay announced he’d left the band, The Hold Steady is releasing its first album without him. Heaven is Whenever is set for a May 4 release date on Vagrant, and on it, guitarist Tad Kubler promises fans a new direction for the band. “Rather than just concentrate on changes in the instrumentation, we made changes to the song writing process,” he says....
- 2/23/2010
- Pastemagazine.com
Lifter Puller has generally been remembered merely as the band Craig Finn and Tad Kubler were in before they formed The Hold Steady. But in reality, the group was its own unique, thrilling entity, playing overtly fictional story-songs similar to those Finn grew more famed for, with a wirier, new-wavier sound. Now the band’s catalog is getting the reassessment it deserves: All its albums except its self-titled debut are being re-released with bonus tracks, and they’re abetted with a superb rarities collection, Slips Backwards. Lifter Puller (1996) introduced Finn’s tongue-twisting lyrical style and bad-parties subject matter, particularly ...
- 12/1/2009
- avclub.com
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