Do you remember being just a small child, rifling your dirty paws through the cereal box trying to fish out the prize at the bottom of the box? No? Okay let's flash forward about ten years; what about when you were sitting at the dinner table thinking how you were going to get those same dirty paws down your boy/girlfriend's pants that night? Most likely your parents were venting about what a mundane day they experienced at their jobs. Almost immediately following their diatribe they offered you a bit of advice, "You know, enjoy it while you're young. It won't be like this forever." Of course it was a suggestion lost on you seeing as you were strategizing on how you'd hope to get lucky that night. Flash Forward another fifteen years into the future. Your nearing thirty, fat, depressed and stuck in a job that pays well enough though it sucks your soul away one board meeting at a time. Somehow you wish you made more of your younger years.
On Boys and Girls in America, The Hold Steady reminds of this lesson, only doing so in manner that just might catch our attention this time around. That is, if we're sober enough to comprehend it. In the opening lines of the album, the band proves not only can they rock but they're quite literate to boot, using a Jack Kerouac quote to set the stage for the entire theme of the album, "Boys and Girls in America have such a sad time together". Song by song Craig Finn and company weave vignettes complete with characters and conflicts, telling stories of what it's like to occupy that awkwardly seminal part of life that is the ages of 18-25. If these tales themselves aren't enough to win you over, each one is accompanied by the tune of rock and roll rowdy enough to have you dancing complete with drink in hand.
Although the songs clearly cater to, at the very youngest, the 21 and over crowd, they have the opportunity to appeal to a high school audience sick of their go nowhere suburban towns. Soaked with melodies and the spirit of a few too many whisky sours, the music and mood on this disc will be the closest thing all us late bloomer will ever get to understanding what it was like to be a teenager in the those decadent decades that were the 70's and 80's.
This album serves as the perfect soundtrack to the beginning of a great night out or the closer to an evening that probably wouldn't be remembered at all if it weren't for the headaches the next morning. Never have I heard an album that gave me such an urgent desire to dance, drink, do drugs and hit on girls all at the same time, smiling all the while. For that I raise my glass to them.
