During another triumphant stretch of song work on his band’s latest release, Craig Finn repeatedly confides, “Heaven is whenever we can get together.” And for the majority of his rock ’n’ roll tenure he has validated that same sentiment. The Hold Steady are nothing if not a communal experience, and their history of bringing spit-covered bar rock to an arena-rock scope has repeatedly stretched intimacy to such an expansive scale that the moments of surreal euphoria often appear truly divine. But on their latest, “Heaven is Whenever,” the Hold Steady are more pointed toward the sweeping grandiosity of their spacious guitar work. They’ve lost their nagging voice and itch to party, and in doing so, they’ve lost the aspect that made them so relatable. Finn’s lyrics existed more in crowds than they ever really did on a stage, and that was what connected the two and made the fans feel intertwined in the songs.
And perhaps that’s the most awkward transition period on “Heaven is Whenever”: Finn’s lyrical perspectives are no longer our own. He always toed the line between confessional honesty and elaborate storytelling, but he was always entrenched in the story himself. He was always the cool uncle who still did drugs and met girls, and he was always the best at retelling the stories about them. But this time around, he’s more of a father figure. When he does re-enter our perspective, he takes on the paternal responsibility of the volatile “Hurricane J.” He seems like a storyteller who might not see any irony in a song about “Rock Problems.”
The rest of the band doesn’t seem entirely sure-footed either. Their bigger-than-Jesus riffs are what extended early Hold Steady records as far as they did, but they keep trying to tailor themselves to Finn’s barroom vocals. Keyboardist Franz Nicolay’s departure certainly didn’t help the process, and his soaring vocals and circus-tent piano are noticeably absent from songs like “The Weekenders.”
As if a parting gift for those of us nostalgic for their earlier material, the Hold Steady closed “Heaven is Whenever” with the closest regression to Almost Killed Me and Separation Sunday’s start-stop riffs. “Barely Breathing” shows Finn back in the mosh pit, spilling blood and nearly getting killed. By the time the singer hands him a pamphlet on Hare Krishna, he says, “You gotta be kidding.” Handed the rest of “Heaven is Whenever,” many of us are likely to say the same.
In “Soft in the Center,” Finn explains it all when he says, “You can’t tell people what they want to hear / If you also want to tell the truth.” It’s hard to say which side of the band’s discography represents what we want and which side represents the truth, but it’s fairly obvious that whichever side we’re on now is the side he is intending to stick with.
The easy comparison here is Wilco. For most die-hard fans who have followed the Chicago outfit from as far back as 1995’s “A.M.,” the intensely personal alt-folk group’s most recent three albums of adult-contemporary sound like a band out of ideas. Yet, nowadays they’re more popular than ever. Craig Finn and Co. seem to be following a similar trajectory.
They’ve already written a handful of canonical records to rally a faithful band of supporters, and they can afford to shed some hostility without losing too many followers. So although it doesn’t deliver on the surface, if Heaven is Whenever is properly used as the foundation it is meant to be, the Hold Steady are poised to become the next biggest band in the world, even if that means they’re no longer somebody’s favorite.