The song of the year, so far

My high hopes for The Hold Steady's Teeth Dreams have largely been realised - and 2014 has finally delivered some classic songwriting for me to enthuse about.

It's great to have a new record from this band, after about a four year gap. No-one else has quite the same combination of power chords, punch-the-air choruses and (shaggy-dog-) story-telling lyrics. And, on top of the record, they've just been added to the bill for Brighton's Great Escape festival, so I hope to see them live for the first time next month.

Front man Craig Finn might look more like a middle-manager than a rock god, but he can give the best account of the redemptive potential of the music this side of Bruce Springsteen and Patti Smith. 'We've gotta stay positive', as he famously sang on the band's 2008 album of that name and he still generally does, despite a lyrical predilection for picaresque tales of losers and lowlife. He's 42 now and came to the classic rock stylings which inform his writing via the likes of Hüsker Dü and the Replacements, growing up in Minneapolis, which is still the setting for many of his songs. There has always been a slightly punky, eighties edge to the band, though they do seem consciously to have gone for a more consistently rock feel to the current album. I have some issues with the limited-palette production, particularly with the way Finn's voice is back in the mix and often heavily echoed: you sometimes need the lyric sheet to work out what's going on - and that's silly when the words are as good as they often are. Never mind: do what it takes.

If you don't know the band, let me recommend two songs from Teeth Dreams as a fine entry point. (If you do know the band, you're probably already raving about them too.)

'Big Cig' (listen here) makes me want to bounce around in a way which I entirely understand is both unseemly and unwelcome to the world at large. The mix of scything chords, feedback, pounding drums and shouted-along backing vocals is right up my street, but listen to the words: a self-deprecating account of a relationship, the importance of which the protagonist can't quite bring himself to admit to...

She's a girl 'with burns on her skirt and smoke in her eyes' who likes long cigarettes because they're better value:

I know that's she's gorgeous.

I can't take her serious.

She looks kind of ridiculous

With her Malibu 120s.

The singer acknowledges that 'she can probably find a better guy', but that doesn't matter because:

It's not love.

It's not even a crush.

That's fine.

We don't believe him, of course.

On to 'Almost Everything' - my song of the year, so far. (Listen and watch here.) Chiming acoustics, instead of the album's mostly electric guitars. No drums. It's a lovely collection of life-on-the-road set-pieces:

The bus it rolled up into Franklin at dawn and everything seemed super slo-mo

The Waffle House waitress that asked us if we were Pink Floyd.

Finn could be singing about a particular relationship within that tour-bus setting or talking more about his feelings about performing and his audience. The imagery works fine both ways:

Yeah, there are nights I get terrified.

I'm sure you get terrified too.

So, hey, won't you show me a sign

If I'm getting through to you.

I'm still pretty into you.

There's an impressive amount of narrative substance in the song's 4 minutes 17. A hospital admission; one of those rambling conversations we've all had about 'movies and Krishna and hardcore and Jesus and joy'; a medical emergency where 'the kid who went down isn't dead, he just can't find his phone'. But the very best bit of the lyric, which I can't help grinning at even as I write it down, is an account of a cinema visit along the way. With my limited exposure to popular culture, I'm not even sure if it's describing a real film - it should be:

Went to some movie. It was loud, dumb and bloody.

The third act took place in a wormhole.

The hero ascended to heaven.

Then we headed home. 

The Hold Steady are one of those bands who I think should be a lot bigger than they are. I assumed Stay Positive would be the breakthrough album, their equivalent of REM's Green. That didn't happen, and now they're on to the equivalent of Monster. That album wasn't perfect, of course, but rocked out splendidly with plenty of verve and wit. The same is true of Teeth Dreams. Give it a go.

London Marathon

Just four days to go till this year's London Marathon.

My splendid daughter Harriet is running on behalf of RoadPeace, a charity which works with and on behalf of the victims of road crashes. (She had a very nasty accident herself when she was 16, which rather adds to the otherwise trifling challenge of 26.2 miles of tarmac...)

Generous Eden On The Line readers may like to make a donation here. Tight-fisted ones should also feel free to follow suit. 

And for any pedantic ones of either persuasion wondering just what the musical connection is to this post, here's a link to Harriet's always-entertaining Secret Sessions internet channel.

Run like the wind, Hat...

Um... now March has gone somewhere similar

And I'm still waiting to be knocked out by some new music in 2014.

Beck's Morning Phase is decent enough, with a lovely, lush sound. But it's one-paced and the songs blend into one another without any of them grabbing me suffciently firmly by the malleus, incus or, indeed, stapes...

Del Barber's Prairieography is rather more hit and miss: some strong songs and good playing mixed in with some more clichéd 'make a country noise now' moments.

My hopes have currently shifted to The Hold Steady's Teeth Dreams, which is gathering encouraging reviews and should be in my hot hands shortly.

Meanwhile, the year's best vinyl moment has been picking up a copy of Black Sabbath's first album, complete with a Vertigo swirl label, at last week's Brighton record fair. (An Italian pressing and not too extravagant...) They were a remarkable band in those days, pretty much untrammelled by any commercial expectations. I love Paranoid too, but that was the start of a rather more conventional writing style and sonic palette.

At least I have now been to a gig this year: a really enjoyable celebration of the music of Nick Pynn at the Dome last Sunday, featuring the great man himself playing with a host of musical and comedic chums. A personal highpoint was Mike Heron leading the assembled crowd through the opening section of 'A Very Cellular Song'. Gorgeous.

So where did February go?

I've had a splendid couple of (non-music-related) weeks away in Australia and Korea, which is part of an excuse for some thin pickings here.

Since coming back I've been ploughing through the 33 1/3 series' exacting submission requirements. It can sometimes be helpful to wake up jet-lagged at four in the morning – you can get a lot of writing done undisturbed. Anyway, the pitch is in now. If they have any sense, they'll soon be snapping up my proposal for a book about Bob Dylan's John Wesley Harding. And if they haven't, you'll be seeing more about it here...

I'm stilling waiting to hear my first killer record of 2014, though I have reasonable hopes for both Del Barber's Prairieography and Beck's Morning Phase, once I can get my hands on the full albums.

And I still haven't been to a gig yet this year. A celebration of Nick Pynn's music at the Dome on 23 March should make a fine start. I then have tickets for Dan Stuart, Michael Chapman and Emmylou Harris in the next couple of months.

In other (and excellent) news, I gather Wussy's Attica is now due to be released in May. Which is a good reason for posting a nice picture of Lisa Walker.

Onward and upward.

New from Two Wings

I'm delighted to hear that Two Wings are swinging back into action, having laid somewhat low after releasing the excellent Love's Spring and playing one of my gigs of the year in 2012.

You can hear a new song 'Peace-Fear' here, accompanied by an endearingly odd video. It's a powerful group performance with some lovely guitar and vocals, and subtly effective keyboards dropping in. Bodes well for their second album A Wake, which is due in April.

How about a gig in Brighton this time?

It has been a slightly slow start to my musical 2014, with no gigs so far and not much in the way of new record purchases. Bruce Springsteen's High Hopes is, of course worthy of your attention, but don't go in with them too high... There are some lovely songs, notably 'Harry's Place' and '41 Shots', but also some stuff that (by The Boss's standards) is more like filler. Plus I still don't really get Tom Morello, much as he seems to energise his compadre.

Anyway, nice to have some more releases to look forward to. Now, if Wussy could get round to finishing the album they said they were recording last summer, things would really be looking up.