Thursday 2 November 2006

Tht Hold Steady

These past few days I've had this cyst thing growing inside my ear. It's been getting progressively worse and this morning on the way to work it had become so painful and swollen that I couldn't get my right earphone in. Nasty.
I'm not just sharing this with you in the spirit of openness and frank honesty between friends though. There is a point.
And that point brings us nicely to the new album by The Hold Steady, Boys And Girls In America. One thing I did today was listen to this album for the first time. Another thing I did today was take a scalpel and jam it into that painful cyst in my ear to let the fluid collected inside it out (I wear a white coat to work, that more than qualifies me to carry out minor medical procedures on myself). I'm sure only the thick kids at the back haven't already worked out where I'm going with this, but here goes anyway. Can you guess which of these two things was more pleasurable? Which I'll have the fonder memories of?
That's right, scalpel in the ear over this piece of shit album every time. I'm not sure if it was the band's intention to conjure the mental image of the singer from Stiltskin, on the toilet, groaning his way through Road To Hell by Chris Rea whilst he tries to strain out a particularly stinky one caused by a nasty bout of egg over-indulgence induced constipation as The E Street Band look on and play arthritic Green Day covers in the corner.
If it was I take my hat off to them on a job well done, but I hate to credit the kind of people that could come up with this album with that much imagination.

I stole this album from the Internet and I still feel I would be justified in writing to somebody to ask for a refund.

I can't remember who recommended this album to me (I have a long history of alcohol abuse), but if you are reading this please never make any suggestion to me again. About anything. Ever. You bastard.

The Hold Steady photographed by idiots last week