The sing-a-long songs'll be our scriptures...

I went to The Great Escape in Brighton a couple of months ago. In case you haven't heard of it, it's a kind of showcase event for hobnobbing music insiders and a festival for ordinary punters, with lots of chit-chat and breathless excitement about The Next Big Thing (this year: The Ting Tings. And/or Vampire Weekend).

Brighton is, of course, beyond cool. And so were the Great Escapers: fashions I couldn't possibly follow or understand (I'm over 30, you see) abounded; there were boys with peel-em-off tight jeans and deck shoes, girls in day-glo colours, wonky haircuts and Serious Makeup everywhere. And then I went to Hove.

Hove used to be a town to the west of Brighton and now it's part of Brightonandhove, the south coast's hippest city (as of 2001). The venues for The Great Escape are scattered across town and perhaps the furthest flung is Hove's stately Old Market, which is where Mojo were hosting an evening on the Saturday night.

The Hold Steady were headlining. Walking into the venue was like stepping out of Mr Ben's dressing room and into a different world entirely: gone were the hipsters and the indie kids and the studious, louche youth in abundance elsewhere at the festival, replaced instead by comfy, middle-aged men and a smattering of girls drinking pints of cider. The Hold Steady are not, you know, cool. In Craig Finn they have a sort of standard-bearer for the ordinary man: he's bespectacled, thinning on top and thickening around the middle. He writes songs that reference each other and Hold Steady records have recurrent characters and themes (drinking, parties, disaffected youth). The Hold Steady are not Vampire Weekend and they are not The Ting Tings. They are a little bit Dad Rock. But they are also the best bar band ever.

Stay Positive is their fourth album and it was always going to be difficult to follow up their third, Boys And Girls In America, which was critically acclaimed and rightly so, chock-full of fist-pumping anthems to get drunk to. They were scattered across the record, from its opening salvo of Stuck Between Stations and Chips Ahoy! to its sardonic closer Southtown Girls. There was barely a weak spot in sight (yes, I am wearing somewhat rose-tinted specs and forgetting Some Kooks, but still).

Stay Positive presents with a bit of a dilemma, though. I wanted, and expected, to love it unreservedly. To think of it as a four-star record, at the very least. But I've lived with it for a couple of months now and don't feel as drawn to it as I'd imagined I would be; it certainly starts full of vim, but drifts away towards the middle and never really regains its early pace.

Constructive Summer should have been the album's statement of intent, a rowdy opener reminiscent of Husker Du that charts a group of friends in some nameless, bleak mill town, looking forward to spending a summer together. There's an air of defiance in Finn's lyrics, closing out the song with "We are our only saviours / We're gonna build something this summer". Despite its hopeless backdrop - one of Finn's many deftly-painted vignettes of small-town America - this is a feelgood and ultimately celebratory track.

It's followed with another sucker-punch in Sequestered In Memphis, the first single, in which a nameless narrator, down on his luck, is questioned - perhaps by the police - about some unspecified incident with a girl he picked up in a bar. The song, with its bold horns, careening keyboards and irresistibly catchy chorus, ranks amongst The Hold Steady's finest.

Memphis showcases Finn's innate skill as lyricist too; he is a great storyteller and whilst it's difficult not to make the Springsteen comparison that seems so tired nowadays, it's increasingly Warren Zevon that also springs to mind, particularly on the macabre and somewhat sinister One For The Cutters. There's the same sense of black humour that Zevon often employed in this baroque murder ballad, which also sees Franz Nicolai adding a harpsichord to his armoury, intensifying the song's quirkiness.

Stay Positive does hit bum notes, though. I vowed to forget all about Some Kooks - the only mis-step on Boys And Girls In America - but upon hearing Navy Sheets, those memories come flooding back: it's a similar jumbled mess of a song that almost has me reaching for the 'skip' button. And I do very strongly disapprove of the skip button. Both Crosses is similarly lacking, a pity because lyrically it's sound, exploring themes of Catholic guilt - but the music doesn't quite stack up.

The title track's a winner, though. Here Finn is introspective, reflecting on growing older, but the song is far from maudlin and its rousing chorus has already made it a live favourite.

So The Hold Steady's fourth is by no means a dud. It's witty and clever and confirms Craig Finn's standing as one of the best American songwriters, someone unafraid to show his influences but imaginative enough to employ his own voice as well. The Hold Steady know how to do rock music and for the most part they do it deftly here; even if Stay Positive doesn't quite hit the heights of its predecessor, it is still a good record, and this band will probably still be around after everyone has forgotten all about The Ting Tings.

Release date: 14/07/2008
Artist website: www.theholdsteady.com
Label: Rough Trade

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