The Hold Steady - Stay Positive

“Just in time for summer—the perfect season for its classic rock-inspired songs of young love, townies, house parties and part-time jobs—the Hold Steady makes good on the promise of 2006’s acclaimed “Boys and Girls in America” with “Stay Positive.” This time, Brooklyn’s working class heroes have stepped up their musicality (harpsichord is featured on “One for the Cutters”) and melodic balladry (”Lord, I’m Discouraged” is an aching prayer), while still providing their signature cacophonous anthems with songs like the barn-burning “Navy Sheets,” with backing vocals from Drive-By Truckers’ Patterson Hood. Elsewhere, frontman Craig Finn longs for 7 Seconds and Youth of Today (the title cut), sets religious metaphors to a woozy acoustic backdrop (”Both Crosses”) and nods to Jersey Shore-era Springsteen (”Yeah Sapphire”). As usual, it’s sweet, intelligent and thoroughly rockin’.—Lavinia Jones Wright”