I was listening to this album last night and I was kind of blown away by it.

To me The Hold Steady are a band that has never released any bad music. Does this have the same fist pumping power as some of their previous material, no. But there are certainly songs that make you throw up your fists.

Craig Finn is still one of the best story tellers in music today (along with John Darnielle). That is still shown on this record. And "The Weekenders" is probably the best song of 2010.

I agree with Jelone.

That being said, even at their worst, the Hold Steady still make better music than almost every other active rock band.

if this album was put out by another band, it probably wouldn't even have been reviewed

The review is exactly right - this is the worst hold steady album (if you still don't think so, go listen to everything else and try to argue it with ta straight face), however it is still better than almost everything else that will be released this year. That's why I don't agree with the actual star rating - it's not fair to penalize an album just because the band has too much potential. Give them 3.5 stars with an asterix for disapointment or something to acknowledge the fact that it's still an 'better than average' album.

4 stars for the "rock and roll problems" song. This album is fun.

even at their worst they are still better than most

The album is really great. No complaints on the review; it was seemingly honest.

Arguing about punk cred on the internet always amazes me.. talk about a paradox.

I just want everyone to know that I think that something CAN travel FASTER than the speed of light.

"hurricane j" equals my thoughts most of the day. this album was real good. yeah, a little slower than the other ones, but you can only write songs the kids can jump to for so long. especially when you are about 40 years old. don't trust the reviewer. he sucks just as much as the rest of them around here.

Who thought The Hold Steady could be so polarizing?

There is no "Stuck Between Stations" on this album, and that bothers me.

the review is fine. It's just wrong

good review..

and good album.

look at me not getting offended at somebody's differing opinion. nuts, right?

Yeah, this review is pretty much totally completely wrong. This album rocks. The end.

It is absurd to suggest that the primary singer/songwriter of Lifter Puller has any lack of "punk credibility." Though The Hold Steady is certainly no Lifter Puller, Franz Nicolay has never done anything even worth mentioning in the same sentence as Lifter Puller.

Jelone must've taken about 2 hours to write that review, what with one hand on the keyboard and the other giving Franz an HJ.

D Boon - My blast on the title, but you'd have to be rimming Costello himself to put Almost Blue on par with Blood and Chocolate or Armed Forces. Also, I didn't call that period terrible, just middling. Do I like Trust? Yeah. Is it in my top 5? Fuck no, and you're a damn fool for thinking otherwise. I can't believe someone on the Internet is overreacting!

Also for the record, I don't pirate music. I either pay for it myself or I receive promos. In this case, I paid for a CD copy of the album. Using cash.

The songs are too slow? Give me a break; horrible review.

also, that was my hand in the album cover.

essentially, this review is just a blowhard commentary about how bad the reviewer wants to bang franz nicolay. somebody please write a real review, or i'm going to have to keep flooding this thread with science and commentary about the film "Powder."

franz is a dork

"It seems that time travel has captured the imaginations of people since time began."

What a horrible opening sentence.

Do I miss Franz? I guess. Did I really notice is absence on this record? No. I

think if listened to in the context of their other albums, Heaven Is Whenever is perfect. As the reviewer of Stay Positive said, the Hold Steady grew up on that record. In response to growing up, we have Heaven Is Whenever. A record that, to me, is the thought pattern of someone who has grown up and is reflecting back on the things they've done in a deeper more personal way then we saw on Stay Positive.

It's a record that grows on you. I listened to it and liked it. I listened to it again and I really liked it. The third time I listened to it I was sure this record will be one of the best released this year. Every following listen just cements my opinion a little bit more.

Franz left The Hold Steady? I seriously didn't know that. He's definitely a talented motherfucker.

Anyway, I can't score this, because I've heard none of it, but so much of their older material is kind of boring... a few kick-ass tunes, but overall people need to put their dicks away.

"Maybe it’s just a hiccup--Costello dropped a few middling albums between Get Happy!! and King of England..."

Oh, you mean the period that included TERRIBLE albums such as "Imperial Bedroom," "Almost Blue" and "Trust"? Yeah, those are all just awful, definitely not classics at all. And it's "King Of America," numbnuts.

It seems that time travel has captured the imaginations of people since time began. Einstein’s Special Theory of Relativity speculated that traveling close to the speed of light would physically alter time by dilating it. This means that there should be places where time slows down, and others where time speeds up. Discovery News reports that Hawking recently expanded on this theory, outlining several theoretically realistic ideas for traveling through time.

Hawking almost perfectly explains his theories in a letter to the Daily Mail in a way that non-cosmologists can understand. He encourages people to think of time as dimension just like width, height and length. Just as when you travel in a car, you can go forward, right or left. The fourth dimension would be time. And all around us are wormholes that could act as a time tunnel.

As Hawking writes, “Down at the smallest of scales, smaller even than molecules, smaller than atoms, we get to a place called the quantum foam. This is where wormholes exist. Tiny tunnels or shortcuts through space and time constantly form, disappear, and reform within this quantum world. And they actually link two separate places and two different times.” The time tunnels are too small for people to travel through, but Hawking and others believe that someday a wormhole could be widened for person or ship to travel through to the future.

Hawking points out that travel backward in time may be impossible due to the cause and effect theory. (For example, if you travel backward and prevent your birth, how could you have ever been born?) Further, Hawking suspects that radiation might collapse the wormholes, rendering them useless anyway.

Another way to time travel rides on the “time as a river” theory. As Einstein proposed before him, there are places where time moves faster and where time moves slower. It depends if there are things that drag on space, much like rocks in a moving river. The Earth itself drags on space, meaning time moves slower on Earth than it does in space. Hawking points out that the Global Positioning System satellite network in space must be adjusted because of this.

Further, Hawking claims black holes may be the key to time travel. He asks us to imagine a spaceship orbiting a super-massive black hole some 26,000 miles away. To us, it would just look like the ship makes one orbit every 16 minutes. As Hawking writes, “A black hole … has a dramatic effect on time, slowing it down far more than anything else in the galaxy. That makes it a natural time machine. … But for the brave people on board, close to this massive object, time would be slowed down. For every 16-minute orbit, they’d only experience eight minutes of time.”

Hawking reminds us that nothing can travel faster than the speed of light, and that time will always slow down right before reaching this speed. Therefore, if we had a ship that could travel near the speed of light, we could also travel in time.

the biggest problem i've had with the new album is that it seems like they recorded the drums in a way that they seem like a separate part of the rest of the music....like the kick drum recording on that one Samiam album...Soar, maybe?

I've always respected this band, but other than one song on each album I've heard ("Your Little Hoodrat Friend", "Chips Ahoy!" and "Constructive Summer") I've never really been entertained by them. I always expected someday they'd put out an album that'd grab me.

That's this album. The slow songs are heartbreaking and captivating, and the fast ones are so guitar-heavy it's ridiculous. I'm always sad for a second or two when one of the songs ends, until I remember how awesome the next one is. It was a grower, but, damn, this band really perfected every aspect of their sound.

I know music is subjective and all that, but this review is WRONG!

Great record, don't miss the keys at all.

spot on review. nice job.

Yeah, the production is crystal clear and heavy. I can see why people would call it overproduced, but I think the sound is splendid.

If it sounds 'quiet and fuzzy', then you probably downloaded a shitty leaked copy of the album.

Gotcha, good to know! I was planning on getting a legit version as soon as I found out whether it sounded better than what I had or not.

A little uneven, but the highlights are incredible.

If it sounds 'quiet and fuzzy', then you probably downloaded a shitty leaked copy of the album. Thats what I did. Once i bought the CD and ripped it to my PC it sounded way better. I picked up the vinyl as well.

Overproduced? Have been listening to a bad rip of this thing? It seems quiet and fuzzy. It's much quieter than most of the other stuff I've been listening to, and I've been meaning to ask if anyone else has felt the same about it.

I like the record, and I think 2 stars is far too harsh, but whatever. "Soft In the Center" and "Hurricane J" fucking rule and the reviewer's score has no bearing me.

2 Stars my ass - this album is fantastic.

crazy talk, you're crazy, Jelone...GET OFF THE ROAD!

The slow songs do suck, I saw The Hold Steady about a month ago and they played something like 8 songs off this album and it was a total snoozefest. Good time for a piss break or to grab a new drink at least. The difference in crowd reaction to the new songs vs anything old was amazing. Songs like The Weekenders and Hurricane J got an OK reaction, and I thought Rock Problems was great live, but the rest of the songs were just plain boring live.

I agree w/the majority of comments in this review. I still like it, and think that SOME of the criticisms are a little harsh, but as big a fan as I am, I still only give it 3 outta 5. But, like the reviewer said, still better than most of the stuff that'll come out this year.

This is a big, dumb guitar rock album. It works really good at being just that.

Franz is touring on keys with Against Me! this summer, maybe he'll join full time and make them good again?

Wait, how do the Dresden Dolls give you punk cred? I didn't know fat crybaby goth girls who don't own razors upped the punx.

Band is different without Franz, but that doesn't stop this album from being great and The Weekenders from being one of their best tunes.

Serious album of the year contender for me.

nice one for having the balls to call a spade a spade: this album is utter bunk!

sounds like counting crows trying to write u2 songs

I am with you on all points. The riffs are weak and there are too many slow songs. They suck at slow songs.

This album is fantasitc. The only song I don't love is "The Smidge".
I miss Franz too, but this album hardly suffers from his departure. The songs are still great.

The slow songs are actually the best songs on this album. 'The Sweet Part of the City' and 'We Can Get Together' are both great. I think this album just needs to grow on you. I've listened to it for about a week straight and I love it now.

Did Franz write this review?

I loved it, this will probably be my most-played album this summer.

Good review. I had exactly the same "Where's Franz?" kind of feeling after my first listen, as well. Maybe Craig Finn, et al. can
start growing moustaches. Can't hurt.

Woah woah woah!! Yeah the band sounds different without Franz Nicolay, but I really liked this after about three listens.

A bad album from a good album. Oh well, they put out a new one about every 16 months, so it's not a big disappointment and the wait for the next one won't be too long.