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Daniel Fletcher, April 29th 2010
The Hold Steady, one of my favorite bands, will release their fifth album Heaven Is Whenever on May 4th. Heady lead singer Craig Finn pens the band’s complex, clever lyrics and has a penchant for referencing artists and songs from his youth (he’s 38). One track from the forthcoming album, the beautifully slow burning “We Can Get Together”, alludes to at least seven songs. Although many of the referenced songs touch on heaven and love (see album title), in Finn’s own words the track is “…about how we find moments of bliss and euphoria in rock ‘n’ roll…the real calm moments of just sitting on the floor with someone and listening to records is one of the most beautiful things I can think of. You create your own little world through music in some ways, so I was trying to capture that.”
I hope that most readers (listeners?) of this blog have experienced a moment similar to what Finn describes in that quote. When creating a playlist for this project, I originally went with Songs I Listen to in the Shower While Drinking Beer and Getting Pumped Before I Go Out. But, instead I created a list of the songs referenced in “We Can Get Together”, because many of them are obscure and all are excellent. I’m sharing them with you because The Hold Steady shared them with me.
The lyrics are packed with allusions and double meanings but you’re clever kids so I’m not going to hold your hands, we all have the Google and etc. That said, I’ve provided two notes for tracks where the significance may be missed:
“Our Love Is Heavenly” – Heavenly
An early 90’s twee band and member of C86…twee preceding the twee movement…lead singer Amelia Fletcher was drummer Matthew’s older sister…Matthew took his own life in ’96 after which the band retired their name Heavenly.“Makes No Sense At All” – Husker Du
A hardcore punk group from Minneapolis, where Finn grew up and attended many of their shows as a teen…the band name is in Swedish and translates to English as “do you remember”.The jams are presented in the order they are first referenced.
Daniel Fletcher would like the only thing you know about him to be that he loves THS and that he skied a black diamond called Gloryhole.
