The Hold Steady

Considering the number of pejoratives leveled at The Hold Steady, it’s hard to believe that the group’s last release, 2006’s Boys and Girls in America, garnered such a warm public and critical response (including an increasingly difficult 9.4 rating from Pitchfork). Often derided as little more than a glorified bar band, The Hold Steady devotes some record-space to literary odes to seemingly unremarkable events like passing out at concerts, stumbling around drunk or meeting a make-out partner at a detox tent, but those tales hardly tell the entire story. Lyricist and frontman Craig Finn packs songs with allusions to the works of Jack Kerouac and fellow Minnesotan John Berryman (suddenly an indie-rock poet of choice), marrying blistering classic-rock guitar reminiscent of Thin Lizzy with the overarching lyrical ambition of Greetings from Asbury Park-era Springsteen. The Hold Steady headline an 8 p.m. show at the Turner Hall Ballroom tonight.