Sunday 8th March. Bush Hall, London. The Hold Steady. Always look forward to a Hold Steady gig, great songs, great band and the sheer enthusiasm of frontman Craig Finn almost guarantees a good show. It’s been thirteen years since I first saw this band in a small club in Portsmouth and tonight for the final show of the London Weekender they are playing a similarly small venue and one of my favourites in London, Bush Hall.
Whilst the fine album ‘Thrashing through the passion’ is only six months old the shows over this weekend have not been a hard promotion but have taken in tracks from throughout their career. The Electric Ballroom shows drew heavily from the masterpiece that is ‘Boys and Girls in America’ but tonight the showcase album is debut ‘Almost Killed Me’ and it’s nice to hear a lot of these old tracks for the first time in a long while. Not far behind is five tracks from ‘Stay Positive’ from 2008. I’m sure it’s no coincidence that the vast majority of the set draws from the albums with Franz Nicolay in the band and I’m glad to say that he’s back with them. It’s a far more rounded sound when he’s around and he plays with such a joy on his face it’s infectious. That to be fair can be said of the whole band who are constantly smiling and joking around throughout the night.
Whats clear tonight is there is a real hard core fan element in the house. They create a rarely seen mosh pit in Bush Hall, know all of the words and with The Hold Steady there are a lot of words and sing at the top of their voices. I will be hard pressed to hear a louder noise than this crowd sing shouting the ‘Wo-ah-oh-ee-ah-oh-ee-oh’ chorus from ‘Chips Ahoy’.
It’s a relentless hundred minutes with the band rattling through 24 songs with little rest bite. The only lighter moment is the nice start to the encore with just Craig and Franz on stage. That said the twin guitar attack of Tad and Steve really rock this small room and my ears were ringing for hours afterwards which doesn’t happen to these old ears very often these days. And its all held togtehr by the impressive rhythm section of Galen and Bobby
On a night that took me down memory lane some of the highlights included ‘Sequestered in Memphis’ and ‘Yeah Sapphire’ from ‘Stay Positive’ but of course ‘Chips Ahoy’ stood out and shook this venue to its rafters and I feared for the floor that was bouncing and creaking under the weight of the whole crowd pogoing around.
A great night that certainly blew away the cobwebs on a Sunday night.
Keep on rockin y’all