TPO's Lowered Standards Gazette Presents: The Hold Steady

In case you haven't noticed yet, the Hold Steady is some pretty vapid, mediocre crap. If you have any taste with regard to the written word, you'll join me in being disgusted by the unanimous praise that has been spouted at this band, congratulating them for their potent, high-concept slice-of-life humor/poetry. This guy writes absolute bullshit songs. If you really give them the benefit of the doubt, you might pick up, as if through a thick wall, faint cries of an infant good observation shrieking in its crib due to malnourishment. The consensus on the Hold Steady as one of the most kickass bands in America is the equivalent of giving a high school freshman the Pulitzer for his paper on Rabbit, Run.

This is a perfect example of our climate of degraded expectations, which is the new hot issue in the TPO office; it's had us buzzing for a month now. WXPN loves to play The Hold Steady every day, Pitchfork massages Craig Finn's cock a couple of times a month, and people putting Hold Steady records on at parties and play air guitar, and I can only wonder: what the fuck makes anyone think these guys merit this much attention?

It would be easy enough to correct this sad state of affairs, too. Every time they're thinking about playing some monotonous Hold Steady Song about how awful the kids are (hmm), WXPN could instead choose to put on some Will Oldham, which people really need to hear (Days in the Wake or Viva Last Blues, especially). Pitchfork could let everyone know that they should listen to The Bees all the time. And as everybody knows, the only record that should ever be put on at a party is either that new Aesop Rock. I'm kidding, of course, as it's actually Piper at the Gates of Dawn, or maybe A Saucerful of Secrets.

The City Is Rusting Itself Away
lyrics: Craig Finn

And I met her at a party on a Friday, we were both seeing double
Five feet nothing, but when she's drunk she's trouble
She said she...
wanted to cuddle
And she was snorting up cocaine and she had tattoos on her arm,
"I Don't Need Your Advice"
But she was very... nice!
And I didn't think twice, I took her to the heights
And we spent the whole goddamn night
Sprawled out in the back of a cheap car,
And then the next morning we went straight to the bar, because

The kids are all on drugs
Oh the kids are all slugs on drugs
It's a world full of slugs and sluts
Sluts on drugs!

And it was 4 AM, and she'd been passed out for 4 hours plus
And she was so out of it she didn't care what I touched
Even though we were on the bus
And we were both broken from the weekend but we had a good time
And she wakes and asks me where she got that new tattoo
it looks kind of your like a picture of your face... hey, is that you?
I'm starting to worry about her attitude

Because the kids are all on drugs
And they're all gonna die
And this whole town is gonna collapse!
Because of all the sluts on drugs!