On the afternoon of the last day of SXSW, I saw the Hold Steady on the patio of Red 7, at the Brooklyn Vegan showcase, and it was pretty close to the ideal setting for a Hold Steady show: outdoors on a sunny, summery day, with a crowd small and loose enough that one could [...]

Today, the Hold Steady release Teeth Dreams, the album on which they once again affirm their status as one of our greatest working rock bands. And last night, they were on the Late Show With David Letterman, knocking out “Spinners,” one of that album’s early singles. It’s still a bit disorienting to see Cr...

Earlier this week, I posted a Premature Evaluation of the Hold Steady’s excellent new album Teeth Dreams, but there was one slight problem with it: None of you motherfuckers could hear the album yet. It hadn’t leaked, and it wasn’t streaming online; the only songs you could hear, in their studio forms, were &#82...

There are two different ways to experience a Hold Steady album for the first time. There is, of course, the first time you throw the album on, the first time you let the riffs reverberate around in your ribcage for a couple of minutes and then blur into the background while you’re driving or doing [...]

The Hold Steady’s new album Teeth Dreams is about a week and a half away from entering your life, and we’ve posted the album-starting ragers “I Hope This Whole Thing Didn’t Frighten You” and “Spinners.” Yesterday, playing the Public Radio Rock showcase at the SXSW day stage, t...