The Hold Steady's Separation Sunday: A Modern Day Version of the Prodigal Son?

This weekend I started listening to the 2nd Hold Steady release, "Separation Sunday" for the first time. I have been wrestling around with this band's music all month. After hearing this CD, I think I am starting to get it. Or at least get why Andy Whitman said In Christianity Today that The Hold Steady, "might be playing the best and most important rock 'n roll in America."

On this CD The Hold Steady chronicles the lives of some very messy people: Hallelujah (named Holly), Charlemagne, and Gideon (who all show up on other Hold Steady albums). To me these downtrodden characters are modern day prodigal sons and daughters. They are looking for a good life in all the wrong places. Their salvation is hard to come by if they can even find salvation at all. They look for it in drugs, sex, and in their rock-n-roll parties. They dabble in religion but it seems a toss up as to if they really believe or if it really matters to them. The broken characters lead depressing lives seeking after something that they can't seem to find. Holly is the main character here. She seems to have left behind her Catholic upbringing and hangs out with these unsavory characters doing some unsavory things. Holly's journey then is the focus on this album. Craig Finn doesn't condemn his characters for the lives they choose, neither does he offer easy or even full solutions. He just takes you along for the ride and offers an unflinching view of some pretty destructive living.

By the last two songs on the album, something interesting happens. In "Crucifixion Cruise" Holly ends up back in a church.

"Hallelujah came to in a confession booth.
Infested with infections.
Smiling on an abscessed tooth.
Running hard on residue.
Crashing through the
vestibule.
The crucifixion cruise.
She climbed the cross and
found
she liked the view.
Sat reflecting on the resurrection.
Talking loud
over lousy connections.
She put her mouth around a difficult question.
She said, Lord what do you recommend?
To a real sweet girl who's made
some not sweet friends.
Lord what would you prescribe?
To a real
soft girl who's having real hard times."

Is this the prodigal daughter finally arriving home?
The last song "How A Resurrection Really Feels" start off with:

"Her parents named her Hallelujah,
the kids all called her Holly.
If she scared you then she's sorry.
She's been stranded at these parties.
These parties they start lovely
but they get druggy and they get ugly
and they get bloody.
The priest just kinda laughed.
The deacon caught a draft.
She crashed into the Easter mass
with her hair done up in broken glass.
She was limping left on broken heels.
When she said, father can I tell your congregation

how a resurrection really feels?"

and ends with,

"Hallelujah was a hoodrat.
And now you finally know that.
She's been disappeared for years.
Today she finally came back.

Walk on back. Walk on back.
She said don't turn me on again.
I'd probably just go and get myself all gone again.
Holly was a sexy mess.
She looked strung out but experienced.
So we all got kind of curious."

Here is a video that has both songs on it. The video however is part of an interpretation of the album by a group of teenagers.

Holly's return to her church reminds me of what The Prodigal Son would have looked like when he returned to his father in the parable Jesus told. Somehow I think of these characters in The Hold Steady songs as modern day versions of the people who inhabit the Bible: sinners in need of redemption. And the Bible is full of them! And so is our world.

It makes me think of the Bruce Cockburn Christmas song, "Cry Of A Tiny Babe".

"...There are others who know about this miracle birth
The humblest of people catch a glimpse of their worth
For it isn't to the palace that the Christ child comes
But to shepherds and street people, hookers and bums
And the message is clear if you've got [you have] ears to hear
That forgiveness is given for your guilt and your fear
It's a Christmas gift [that] you don't have to buy
There's a future shining in a baby's eyes

Like a stone on the surface of a still river
Driving the ripples on forever
Redemption rips through the surface of time
In the cry of a tiny babe. "

Now I don't believe that Craig Finn has in any way joined forces with the likes of Billy Graham proclaiming, "You must be born again!" Nor do I gather that he embraces a redemptive relationship with God himself. However, I do feel that he looks at religion in all its goodness and badness and throws it out there because it must be something tugging at him deep down in his soul so much that he just can't just leave it alone.

As I have said before this is not Christian rock (and that is a good thing!). But I don't think it is worth averting our eyes and ears away from the music of The Hold Steady when we can listen to these songs and realize that these are the people the Christ Child entered into the world to redeem. Somehow, I think that Jesus would be spending more of His time with these types of characters, if He walked the earth today, rather than sitting through church services, Bible studies, and Pot-Luck dinners. Finally I believe that these are the people that Christ Himself climbed onto the cross for and when they join Him there, man, can they "appreciate the view". So I would guess that these are characters under construction and who knows where they will end up, but The Hold Steady at least makes us take a look at people as they really can appear in all of their gritty messiness. And if this is a modern day version of the prodigal son then the only thing missing is the Father waiting with open arms for the son's (or daughter's) return.

Stay Positive with The Hold Steady

I have been listening to The Hold Steady for over a month now: CDs in the car 0r mp3s as I run. Strangely enough I was introduced to this band through an article in "Christianity Today". The article "Debauchery and Crucifixes: the Hold Steady reminds us of "something bigger" by Andy Whitman calls the latest album "Stay Positive" an "uncomfortable masterpiece, a Christ-haunted work that finds glimmers of glory even in the gutter" and claims the band "might be playing the best and most important rock 'n roll in America." That is pretty heady stuff so I checked out the band and I do like the sound. They sound like a pumped up early Springsteen and they tell tales of hard-luck characters on the wrong side of life and town.

The mistakes and lifestyles these characters choose drive the music, as well as an emphasis on lead singer Craig Finn's Christian (Catholic) upbringing. Mentions of God and faith show up throughout his songs about sinners and saints (however the saints may not be the saints you expected: "Raise a toast to St. Joe Strummer
I think he might’ve been our only decent teacher" from "Constructive Summer". The band namedrops like crazy and references to people, places, and cultural moments abound throughout their songs and it takes multiple listens to even catch a bit of what their songs are about. Then the characters in the songs turn up again in different songs and albums.

Like the characters in Springsteen's "Born to Run" the buddies in "Constructive Summer" talk about moving on from their "work at the mill until you die" town":

"We’re gonna build something, this summer
We’ll put it back together-
raise up a giant ladder
With love, and trust,
and friends, and hammers
(This summer!)"...

and "Let this be my annual reminder that we can all be something bigger"

But the characters do little more than climb the water tower and drink and talk. While they may have had an inkling of faith, it didn't give them the answer they were looking for.

I heard your gospel- it moved me to tears, But I couldn’t find the hate, and
I couldn’t find the fear. I met your Savior, I knelt at his feet, And he took my
ten bucks, and he went down the street.

In the end St. Joe Strummer leads them to believe that you can only save yourself:

"Raise a toast to St. Joe Strummer.

I think he might’ve been our only decent
teacher.

Getting older makes it harder to remember…

we are our only saviors.
We’re gonna build something, this summer."

The music is rollicking and the religious allusions run throughout. NPR radio has a article "The Hold Steady: Church, Drugs and Rock 'n' Roll" and you can listen to three songs and see how The Hold Steady mixes religious imagery into songs on the album "Separation Sunday". You can also read additional notes to figure out all those references to people and places.

The Hold Steady: "Chicago Seemed Tired Last Night"

The Hold Steady: "Cattle and the Creeping Things"

The Hold Steady: "The Swish"

This is probably not the music for your church youth group or for CCM fans, but if you enjoy a good tune and you enjoy looking in dark places for a little bit of light, The Hold Steady may just get your attention. There are obviously things going on in the mind of Craig Finn that compels him to write, much like Springsteen, with a nod to some religious roots that keep tugging at his soul. Whether in a positive or negative direction, the hold is steady.

I took the name for this blog from the lyrics of the song "Stay Positive" a song where the group continues a lyric fisrt found in "Constructive Summer":

"Our psalms are sing-along songs"

...with ...

"There's gonna come a time when the true scene leaders

Forget where they differ and get big picture.

'Cause the kids at the shows, they'll have kids of their own

Their sing-along songs will be our scriptures.

We gotta stay Positive."

The question I ask is, "Can our sing-a-long songs be our scriptures?" Sometimes we make them out to be, but are they simply reflecting life or giving us "Life"? I will organize my thoughts about the music I enjoy on this blog and see what answers I can come up with.


"The Swish" is a great song for your iPod when you are running. Anyhow, when I was a kid, this is how we dressed for church (especially if those are clip on ties). I hated it!

The big question I have been pondering is why this cd was recommended in Christianity Today? Is the magazine trying to show it has a "cool" side? Is the the type of cd the general readership of the magazine will even appreciate? I am not sure, maybe the author, Andy Whitman, was pulling a fast one and seeing what he could get away with. The lyrics in the songs point to a dark world where people live a lifestyle unfamiliar to, I would guess, most readers of the magazine. I know the songs are not about "my world". Or maybe there is something we can learn while being exposed to and pondering the characters sung about by The Hold Steady.

Here is another look at The Hold Steady by Josh Hurst. He writes...

"Though unconventional, this is a band that obviously takes spiritual matters
seriously, and their listeners do well to follow suit...

The Hold Steady
has proven to be a band that's willing to look at tough truths and go places
where few others go. Their latest disc is arguably their most spiritually
complicated and sophisticated set of songs yet... they also spike their lyrics
with some prickly philosophical and theological exploration...

You might
not pick up on that during the first listen because, well, most of their songs
are about drugs and alcohol. But these aren't frat-boy anthems or celebrations
of misbehavior. No, these are songs about the wages of sin and the consequences
of reckless living....

But art isn't about agreeing or disagreeing; it's
about wrestling with big questions and tough topics, about listening to others
with an open heart and a generous spirit...

Surely there's much wisdom
to be gleaned from Craig Finn; few songwriters are better at portraying the
sadness and grief that come from selfish living. On Stay Positive, he wrestles
with responsibility in a way that's genuinely inspiring. And as usual, there's a
dialogue with the Divine that runs through the whole thing, seeming to indicate
that while Finn isn't a man who has everything figured out, he's certainly a man
of some kind of faith. That's one of the many things that makes The Hold Steady
not just a great band, but an essential one—they're working through issues of
faith not with cynicism or hipster irony, but with sincerity and big hearts. If
that's not reason to stay positive, I'm not sure what is"

Here is another interesting take on The Hold Steady on a blog called "Theology Kungfu".

"As Craig Finn states in relation to the band’ 2005 album Separation Sunday,
much of their music is about real people finding real redemption. "I guess a
prodigal-daughter story," Finn states in his interview on NPR’s “All Thing’s
Considered” “It [Separation Sunday] is about a girl who grew up in a religious
background and goes off to try to find something bigger, better, or something
she's missing. And [she] has a lot of experiences and ends up coming back, not
only to her family and to her town, but to her church."

This “coming back” story that weaves its way through the CD is a gritty account of a girl named Holly (“Her parents named her Hallelujah/the kids all called her Holly”)
who lives the life of disappointment and heartbreak many people in middle class
America live out every day but rarely admit to – drugs on the sidetable at
bedtime, drinking to get slightly drunk and forget the disappointments of their
life, relationships that are merely encounters through sex without love. What
makes Finn’s Holly such an important voice for the church today is that she can
actually teach us something if the church would listen. For many CCM artists,
redemption results in the ability to conform within our consumer culture rather
than transform it – to be redeemed is in the mode of redeeming a coupon clipped
from the newspaper – give up something only to buy something else. For Finn, it
is not the type of coupon clipping painted out in the connect-the-dots redemption stories oft heard in CCM songs by the third verse. In the closing song of Separation Sunday, the aptly titled “How a Resurrection Really Feels”, Finn’s prodigal-daughter stumbles into an on-going church service:

If
she scared you then she's sorry.
she's been stranded at these parties.
these parties they start lovely
but they get druggy and they get ugly
and they get bloody.The priest just kinda laughed. The deacon caught a
draft.
She crashed into the Easter Mass with her hair done up in broken
glass.
She was limping left on broken heels.
When she said “Father, can
I tell your congregation how a Resurrection really feels?

Where most CCM is only understood and therefore purchased by devoted Christians, Finn’s real life redemption strips away the abstractions and makes redemption something real people want and can experience and still remain real people."

You can listen to the NPR interview that is referenced in the blog here: The Hold Steady: Rewards and Redemption.