Total Retention: 20 Years of The Hold Steady’s Boys and Girls in America

Vagrant Records

Something I didn’t realize until I started writing this piece is that [adult swim] is responsible for introducing me to not just one, but two of my all-time favorite bands. When the dark claymation comedy Moral Orel entered its final season in 2008, it incorporated a swath of songs by The Mountain Goats in its soundtrack, which is where I first heard John Darnielle’s distinctive voice cry, “I hope you die, I hope we both die!” One year earlier, Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film For Theaters was released along with an accompanying soundtrack CD that I completely wore out at the time. On a compilation mostly full of comedic tie-ins and extreme metal, one curious track that appeared on the album was “Girls Like Status” by The Hold Steady. The song is a B-side from their 2006 album Boys and Girls in America that helped score the film’s end credits and immediately stood out to me thanks to another one of indie rock’s most distinctive voices, Craig Finn. Like an inscrutable message that wouldn’t be demystified until my next year of grade school, Finn kicks off the song’s bridge with, “It was song number three on John’s last CD, ‘I’m gonna make it through this year if it kill me,’ and it almost killed me,” nodding to The Mountain Goats’ scene-defining “This Year” from 2005’s The Sunset Tree. That voice and those cryptic lyrics led me to Boys And Girls In America, which I quickly fell in love with at an age where I was almost certainly too young to understand the trials and tribulations of its cast. It primed me for the 2008 release of Stay Positive, and sparked a lifelong obsession with the world’s greatest bar band.

A few years back, I got to document my weekend with The Hold Steady and The Mountain Goats in Chicago, who teamed up for two glorious shows with Dillinger Four, the celebrated Minneapolis punk band that also get namechecked in “Girls Like Status.” Finn, Darnielle, and D4’s Patrick Costello brought the song to life together for the first time during the second night’s encore, sixteen years after I first heard it. I have spent twelve massive nights with The Hold Steady so far, and if I had to narrow it to the top five, both of those co-headlining shows would be up there. I would also include their Empty Bottle performance in 2017 and the miraculous two times I’ve seen the band play Boys and Girls in its entirety: first in 2016 at Riot Fest for its tenth anniversary, then earlier this constructive summer when they returned to Chicago to celebrate it again for the twentieth. 

Long before it first turned double-digits, I’ve always considered Boys And Girls to be my second favorite album of all time, right behind the unbeatable Raw Power by Iggy And The Stooges. The reasons it’s resonated with me so strongly in the last two decades are likely the same ones that countless members of the Unified Scene have. The sordid storylines of the titular boys and girls, the anthemic choruses that Finn and company pull off so well, and a strong collection of tattooable lyrics. To offer just a few:

“He was drunk and exhausted, but he was critically acclaimed and respected.”

“Lost in fog and love and faithless fear. I've had kisses that make Judas seem sincere.”

“He was rough around the edges. He'd been to school but never finished. He'd been to jail but never prison.”

The legacy of Boys and Girls in America highlights the best and brightest of 2000s indie rock, a band who worked through two other great records to make their first perfect one, and remains a celebrated record for both die-hard fans like myself and casual connoisseurs of the era – eleven songs of romance, challenges, and bad decisions amongst a fictional youth.

Boys and Girls in America’s opening blast is “Stuck Between Stations,” which kicks off with a U2-esque riff that eases the listener in before a quick mention of the album’s title, buried beneath a beat poetry reference from Finn: “There are nights when I think that Sal Paradise was right, Boys and girls in America — they have such a sad time together.” I believe one of Finn’s sharpest lyrics remains “She was a really cool kisser, and she wasn't all that strict of a Christian. She was a damn good dancer, but she wasn't all that great of a girlfriend.” The descriptors of the characters captured in his songs are a hallmark of his writing on any record he leads, from the early days of Lifter Puller to his expansive solo discography.

The next song “is about a boy, a girl, and a horse,” as Finn always introduces it live. “Chips Ahoy!” is a song only The Hold Steady could write, featuring some of the best keyboard work from Franz Nicolay, another one of the band’s defining elements across this record and many others in their discography. Nicolay boisterously bursts and slickly shreds with co-guitarist Tad Kubler on the album’s most uproarious and overlooked cut, “Same Kooks,” and the keyboard and guitar trade-offs in “Hot Soft Light” come off like a Marshall stack version of Wilco’s Nels Cline and Mikael Jorgensen.

The album’s title appears again in the ballad “First Night,” where Finn also postures, “we can't get as high as we got on that first night.” There are many lyrics throughout Boys and Girls that reference getting high: “How am I supposed to know if you’re high if you won’t let me touch you?” on “Chips Ahoy!”; “I wasn’t there, I was blind, high, I was scared” and “There are guys with the wild eyes when they ask you to get high” on “Hot Soft Light;” “It only gets inconvenient when you want to get high alone” on “You Can Make Him Like You.” As a straightedge guy, something about the way Finn describes his characters getting high in all these scenarios is extremely alluring. In some ways, it makes me feel like “high” means more than he says, although maybe that’s just my untainted brain projecting, and truly is just about a bunch of kids getting high. The same thing goes for liquor, like in the epic singalong, (oh shit!) “Party Pit,” where the narrator is “Gonna walk around and drink some more, gonna walk around, gonna walk around, gonna walk around and drink.” 

Of course, with the kind of substances The Hold Steady spill out on the page, there comes plenty of interpersonal turmoil and awkward human truths. There’s always other boys and always other boyfriends on “You Can Make Him Like You,” one of the record’s best hooks, and “Massive Nights” has become one of The Hold Steady’s trademark tunes, with the band naming yearly residencies after it in various cities. “We had some massive nights, we had some crushing lows, we had some lusty little crushes, we had those all-ages hardcore matinee shows.”

I have only seen The Hold Steady play “Citrus” in the Boys and Girls in America setlists, and on one hand it’s a shame they don’t bust it out more, but on the other, it's all the more special when they do. The brief acoustic cut brings the same energy as the full-band rockers do while showcasing some of Finn’s most tender lyrics: “I see Judas in the hard eyes of the boys working the corners, I feel Jesus in the clumsiness of young and awkward lovers.” Late-album highlight “Chillout Tent” usually gets the same treatment, due to its need for male and female call-and-response vocals in the chorus. The original recording featured Dave Pirner of Soul Asylum and Elizabeth Elmore of the criminally underrated Chicago band Sarge. When played live, the band will pull in friends and peers to bring the dueling vocals to life, like at their Riot Fest 2016 set where the girl in America’s vocals were handled by Jessica Louise Dye of High Waisted. At a multi-generation indie rock romp at their Salt Shed B&G set this year, The Hold Steady borrowed vocalists from each of their openers: Alicia Bognanno of Bully and Patrick Stickles of Titus Andronicus.

The album’s finale, “Southtown Girls,” has always been one of my favorite positive jams due to its odd but very, very Hold Steady lyrics. When Finn sings, “Southtown girls won’t blow you away, but you know that they’ll stay,” my young mind heard it as: those girls in America won’t blow you off; they won’t leave, but they’ll stay. Not that the girls were inadequate. And then the rest of the song is just MapQuest directions. It’s brilliant in the Hold Steady way that makes all of their classic material brilliant.

On the album’s 2016 deluxe edition, “Girls Like Status” follows as track twelve, another song I’ve only gotten to hear at the Boys and Girls shows, in addition to the Mountain Goats & Dillinger Four show. A few other B-sides come in tow, with my favorite being “Arms & Hearts,” which is compositionally a very strange song, but once it gets going with the refrain, it pays off like any Hold Steady classic with a good old-fashioned pub-rock rouse. “Arms and hearts and alcohol and death. She was awkward and thoughtful and ascending into heaven dripping wet. Arms and hearts and alcohol and faith. We pull each other in, and then we push it all away.”

Boys and Girls in America is a part of me like I know it is for so many other fans, but I never directly saw myself in the boys or girls in Finn’s stories. There are elements of their feelings that I can connect with, like the running themes of frustration and romanticism, or frustration due to romanticism, but ultimately The Hold Steady evokes the same response in me that I know it does for pop-punk and hardcore fans. The finger-pointing, the lyric chanting, the communal exercises in rock and roll: Finn as the Midwest’s greatest preacher, and his band as the barfly gospel choir. There is so much joy in what they do up there. We are all The Hold Steady. 

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Logan Archer Mounts once almost got kicked out of Warped Tour for doing the Disturbed scream during a band’s acoustic set. He currently lives in Rolling Meadows, IL, but tells everyone he lives in Palatine.

This Year Almost Killed Me: The Hold Steady & The Mountain Goats, Live In Chicago

“It was song number three on John’s last CD:
‘I’m gonna make it through this year if it kills me.’
And it almost killed me.

And song number four on that first D4:
‘You want the scars, but you don’t want the war.’
Now that’s just hardcore.
These kids are clever to the core”

Craig Finn wrote those lyrics in Brooklyn in 2005, and used them as the bridge for a song called “Girls Like Status.” It ended up as only a b-side from the 2006 album Boys And Girls In America. It was also the very first song I heard by The Hold Steady.

The first stanza references the chorus of “This Year,” the 2005 folk-rock anthem by The Mountain Goats, interpolated with The Hold Steady’s 2004 debut album title Almost Killed Me. Now longtime residents of North Carolina, but previously from everywhere else in the country, The Mountain Goats are known for their verbose storytelling and emotional vocal deliveries from singer and songwriter John Darnielle. The same could also be said for The Hold Steady, whose albums often feature throughlines of recurring characters. It’s not a surprise at all that fans of one could be fans of the other and that the two men are fans of each other.

D4 is the abbreviation for Minneapolis punk rockers Dillinger Four, longtime friends and fans of The Hold Steady and vice versa. Craig Finn takes some liberties with the original lyrics from their song “Portrait Of The Artist As A Fucking Asshole.” The exact lines read, “Do you love telling your war stories while hiding your scars?” But it wouldn’t be a Hold Steady song without at least one turn of phrase. Finn never actually says “Girls like status” in the song, but rather “Guys go for looks, girls go for status.”

I first discovered The Hold Steady and The Mountain Goats in middle school, and they gradually earned their places in my top ten bands of all time. Two brilliant, unique groups led by charismatic frontmen who have carved out their own indie rock sound separate from any other artist. I consider albums like Boys In Girls In America or The Mountain Goats’ 2002 divorce rock opera Tallahassee among my most important and loved records. Naturally, when it was announced they would be playing a few shows together, I knew I had to be there. I’m extremely lucky that two of those shows just happened to be in Chicago, where I’ve lived in or around my entire life. If all of that wasn’t exciting enough, Dillinger Four was asked to be the opening act for both nights.

The shows took place at The Salt Shed, a brand new, $50 million venue in Chicago’s near north side. It is quite literally a fully converted and remodeled version of the historic Morton Salt Shed, whose operations shut down in 2015. They officially opened for business last summer, but only hosted shows on the outside grounds stage next to the building itself. They finished the interior for a February 2023 opening and have had quite the roster of shows since, including Bush, Iggy Pop, and The Roots. The concrete hall inside can hold 3,500 showgoers between the standing room floor and the seated balconies. Not only that, but the outside grounds have food vendors all night long, and the building itself has a consignment shop (Umbrella Vintage) and a guitar gear dealer (Fret 12) attached to it that are both open during performances. It was in this former mineral warehouse that all three bands’ dedicated fanbases gathered to celebrate the combined decades of highly-loved music.

Dillinger Four (Mounts)

“On that first night…”

Dillinger Four kicked off the weekend at 8 pm on Friday night; the quartet crammed into stage left away from the other bands’ setup to make the post-set changeover as speedy as possible. They made use of their time and space quite well, burning through about 12 songs in their half-hour slot. I’d seen them once before, and I’m certainly not an expert on the catalog, but they sounded excellent on each track, busting out fan favorites like “Maximum Piss & Vinegar” and “Mosh For Jesus.” It was a perfect set to have sworn in the festivities, providing the first burst of energy needed for the rest of the show. Even Craig Finn was visible from the VIP balcony singing along to most of the set, just like a young diehard fan would.

Around 9 pm entered The Mountain Goats, easing into their first performance with “Liza Forever Minnelli,” a song that John Darnielle has noted as one of his favorites to perform live. Seeing him utilize it as the first tone-setter was nice, but something seemed to be a bit off. Whether he was having trouble hearing the rest of the band or figuring out which key the song was in for his guitar parts, it wasn’t totally clear where the disconnect was. Not the end of the world for being the opening moments of the set if he just needed a few extra moments to settle into the groove.

The Mountain Goats (Mounts)

From there, we heard tracks like “Incandescent Ruins” and the seven-minute epic “Hostages,” both from last year’s excellent Bleed Out. One thing was becoming clear with each selection that passed; this was a very atypical Mountain Goats show. Darnielle led the band through mostly slower, methodical tracks the entire time, rarely raising his voice to heights that fans are used to on more energetic cuts. After the already lengthy “Hostages,” they threw in “An Antidote For Strychnine,” which regularly breaches six minutes in the live setting. Even the widely regarded “Dance Music,” which clocks in at just under two minutes on 2005’s The Sunset Tree, was rearranged to a swing number twice the length of the original.

There were still exciting moments where the band rocked through a few of my absolute favorites songs; the finale of 2017’s Goths album “Abandoned Flesh,” the Scarface-referencing “The Diaz Brothers,” and the espionage-western “Waylon Jennings Live!” Darnielle and the Goats began their typical jazzy live intro to their most notable cut, “No Children,” leading the Shed in the nihilistic chorus: “I hope you die, I hope we both die.” It appeared they would follow it with the equally iconic “This Year,” but they were harshly called off stage for going over their time limit after only playing for 55 minutes. An unfortunately abrupt ending to a Mountain Goats performance, already a bit weighed down by the less-than-thrilling setlist.

The Hold Steady (Mounts)

If there’s one band that can restore all energy and power to a room, it’s The Hold Steady. They kicked off their night one show with “Constructive Summer,” one of their most-finger-pointable anthems from 2008’s Stay Positive. Craig Finn is a master at writing lasting mantras in his songs, “Constructive Summer” containing a handful, like “We’re gonna build something this summer” and “Raise a glass to Saint Joe Strummer, I think he might have been our only decent teacher.” It’s also another one of Finn’s songs where he references Dillinger Four, and the crowd shouted the lyric with all their might. “Me and my friends are like ‘Doublewhiskeycokenoice,’” the name of D4’s number one composition and penultimate song choice of their set.

I had assumed these shows would be co-headliners, with The Mountain Goats and The Hold Steady each playing roughly the same set length. Instead, The Hold Steady doubled the Goats exactly in the form of 25 songs that could have very well been a greatest hits set. And I don’t say that as a dig, it was unbelievable how many of their best tracks they played in succession. “The Swish,” “Sequestered In Memphis,” and “Chips Ahoy!” all made an appearance, and that’s just to name a few. It was also exciting to hear songs from 2021’s Open Door Policy and their brand new album The Price Of Progress, since the band hadn’t played Chicago since 2019’s Thrashing Thru The Passion was released.

It was a nonstop rock block the entire set, particularly the jaw-dropping marathon run of “Your Little Hoodrat Friend,” “Massive Nights,” “How A Resurrection Really Feels,” the encore of “Hornets! Hornets!,” “Stay Positive,” “Chicago Seemed Tired Last Night,” and their constant finale of “Killer Parties.” Whatever may have been left desired from The Mountain Goats’ set was remedied multiple times over during The Hold Steady, but at the end of the night, I was just excited to do it all again the next day.

“Then there’s the other part…”

Saturday night began about the same as Friday, with Dillinger Four’s opening set covering most of the same territory as the first time around. Just as fun and energetic, but if they did switch up the set at all, I didn’t notice. But The Mountain Goats left nothing up to chance, rearranging their setup slightly from the night before with drummer Jon Wurster more in the forefront. Not just visually, but musically as well on this night, helping the band charge through a much more intense show. They picked back up where they left off, opening with “This Year” right out of the gate, and it made the room explode. I’d seen them open with “No Children” once as well, and it was so special hearing each at the very start as opposed to the end. With almost no break, they kicked into “See America Right,” the lo-fi blues rocker from Tallahassee and a song that always sounds huge live.

Craig Finn & John Darnielle (Mounts)

They reprised “Hostages” and “Cadaver Sniffing Dog” from the night before, but other than those and “No Children” later on, there were no repeats. It was a night and day tonal shift, this set filled with fist-pumping folk-punk-rockers like “Heretic Pride” and “Up The Wolves.” This set also marked the first collaborative performance of the weekend, with Craig Finn joining the Goats to sing “Palmcorder Yajna,” easily one of the bands’ best hits. Finn delivered his vocals with as much gusto as ever, a clear expert of the track. They closed on another Darnielle-professed favorite, “Spent Gladiator 2,” where he sang most of the track from the barricade pit directly to the crowd. I’m still not sure if the two vastly different performances were intentional or not. As a longtime devotee, and one who has now officially seen The Mountain Goats more than any other band (14 times, brother), it is cool that I got to see the contrast. Maybe it would have been better for casual or even new fans if they spliced each night between fast and loud and slow and quiet, but I’m certain John Darnielle always knows what he’s doing.

If “Constructive Summer” is the second-best Hold Steady set opener, I know the best is “Stuck Between Stations.” But I’m biased, as it opens Boys And Girls In America, my favorite Hold Steady album. Another solid first batch of songs from the Minneapolis-turned-Brooklyn boys, including “Barfruit Blues,” “You Can Make Him Like You,” and “Stevie Nix.” As I expected, they made a few swaps from the newer material on Friday, only repeating “Sideways Skull” from The Price Of Progress. A crop of deep tracks this time around, too, including Mountain Goats saxophonist Matt Douglas joining the stage for “Banging Camp” and “Hostile, Mass.” The one-two punch of “Southtown Girls” and “Slapped Actress” before the encore break was a really special moment as well.

The guys go for looks” (Mounts)

I had only one huge dream for this weekend, one that could have been too obvious and avoided, but it felt necessary. I had heard The Hold Steady perform “Girls Like Status” only once before, at the end of their full album anniversary performance of Boys And Girls In America in 2016. But here they are, once again playing the song in Chicago, and the stars of the bridge lyrics are in the building and on the bill. So Craig Finn delivered the goods, ramping up to the bridge in the middle of the song talking about the specialness of these shows and all of the bands’ music. And what better way to cap off the weekend than having John Darnielle and Dillinger Four vocalist/bassist Patrick Costello sing their lifted lyrics themselves? Darnielle took the mic first, making the very clever adjustment of singing “Song number three on The Sunset Tree.” Then Costello sang verbatim to Finn’s original paraphrase, although ironically, D4 didn’t play “Portrait Of An Artist” in either of their weekend sets. It was an absolutely momentous, once-in-a-lifetime collaboration that perfectly encapsulated the love Finn has for both bands and the love the fans have for the entire roster.

It still wouldn’t be a Hold Steady show without the “Killer Parties” finale, and whereas Friday night I left before most of the guitar feedback and drum fills, Saturday night I stayed until the amps were cut and the house lights went up. I needed to. This year almost killed me. I needed to feel every last second before it was all officially over before I went back home, and I woke up at 6 am again Monday morning, went back to the warehouse, and let the corporate week burn me down again. “Work at the mill until you die, work at the mill, and then you die,” Finn exclaims in “Constructive Summer.” The Hold Steady is secretly great, working-class bar band music behind the sharp storytelling.

It was a crucial experience for me to be at these shows with friends, family, and fans alike. There’s a reason they call The Hold Steady fanbase The Unified Scene. The Mountain Goats have The Pagan Crew, unified perhaps more by bleak upbringings than last calls at local watering holes. If the Dillinger Four fanbase has a name, Craig Finn must be the fan club president, and I’m in for life now. I won’t forget this weekend. “I’m pretty sure we partied.”

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Logan Archer Mounts once almost got kicked out of Warped Tour for doing the Disturbed scream during a band’s acoustic set. He currently lives in Rolling Meadows, IL, but tells everyone he lives in Palatine.