'Those kids driving around smoking pot aren't bad kids, they're just kids.' Craig Finn of The Hold Steady tells Jim Carrollabout his affinity with the US teenage experience
CRAIG Finn says the title came first. A few years ago, the Hold Steady singer was reading Jack Kerouac's On The Road. The line "boys and girls in America have such a sad time together" jumped off the page at
him. This, he decided, was something he could write a record about and filed it away for the future.
"Love and relationships between guys and girls is something that, no matter how much smarter you get, it doesn't help you understand that part of life," explains Finn.
"Of course, you do think you know a lot more about love when you're 35 than when you're 17. There's been a million songs about love because it is such an interesting topic so that was how I framed everything on the album."
Released last year to a wave of critical acclaim and now getting an European release, Boys and Girls in America is a monster. A rollercoaster ride into the heart of America with the finest bar-band in Brooklyn hitting their stride, The Hold Steady's third album is the most exhilarating and rapturous record to come from the States in yonks.
Cataloguing the lives, loves and losses of a bunch of confused, rough-around-the-edges young folk, it's further proof of Finn's immense prowess as a songwriter. On 2005's Separation Sunday album, Finn tracked a couple of days in the lives of characters called Charlemagne, Gideon and Holly as they roamed from punk party to church and back again via the local mall.
This time around, as the Hold Steady set their sights on the bigger picture, it's the sound as much as Finn's observational detail which will give you a belt in the gob.
According to the singer, this was a deliberate move. "Before we started Boys & Girls, I went back to Separation Sunday and examined it forensically. I wanted to know what worked and what didn't and what stood out was that we sounded like five guys making music together.
"One of the things I really wanted to do with the new album was bring out that joy we have in playing music together. I think on the first two records that my vocals were not as informed by the music as they could have been. The band were doing their thing, and I was doing my thing and we weren't paying much attention to one another. That changed on this record."
You'll hear all manner of musical traces in the wash, from rampant Springsteenisms ("that's down to the use of piano in a rock band, and The E Street Band did that the best, no question about it") to stabs of The Replacements and Husker Du.
Those two bands, like The Hold Steady themselves, hail from Minneapolis, and the Replacements in particular played a big part in Finn realising he too could be in a rock band.
"You're raised to think of someone in a rock'n'roll band as someone you couldn't know or be. It's Mick Jagger, it's Steven Tyler. Then you go see the Replacements in your home town and there are maybe 200 people there. The band are standing right there in front of you and they're a brilliant rock'n'roll band. They didn't look like Jagger or Tyler either . . . It opened up the possibility that rock 'n' roll could be part of my life."
He formed his first band, Lifter Puller, after a spell at Boston College "Lifter Puller were way more arty, angular and jagged than The Hold Steady," he recalls. "When I hear the Arctic Monkeys, they remind me of Lifter Puller."
It took a move to Brooklyn ("every band there sounded like Lifter Puller") for Finn to realise he wanted to form a band along more classic rock 'n' roll lines. "It has never gone out of style for a reason," says the singer about his shift in sound.
"When we started The Hold Steady, Springsteen's first three records were a huge influence, as were The Replacements and even Dylan. They are all wordy rock 'n' rollers who are trying to be descriptive and that's what appealed to me."
Finn comes from an Irish-American Catholic family and all manner of Catholic guilt came to the fore on Separation Sunday. On the new album, though, Finn has let these themes slide."I didn't think that Catholicism had as much to do with the stories I was telling this time," he says. "I found it funny that the people who were most impressed by all the Catholic guilt on Separation Sunday were non-Catholics."
Like his songwriting influences, Finn finds himself drawn time and time again to those all-American kids you'll never see on The OC. "I write about their highs and lows and how they're getting through life," he explains.
"Rock'n'roll to me has always been about that American teenage experience. Sure, maybe it's nostalgia on my part, but it's also trying to explain what's special about that time looking back after all these years."
Finn certainly has an affinity with these mall-rats. On the new album, there's a cracking song called Chill-Out Tent set at an outdoor festival. It's probably the best drug buddy love story since Evan Dando last penned a proper tune.
The songwriter says about this song that he "knew exactly how those characters should feel and express themselves" having gone to dozens of outdoor concerts and festivals and seen kids like that stumbling around.
"Remember they're not the bad kids, those kids driving around and smoking pot, they're the kids," he points out. "They're not deliquents, they're just American kids and the reality is that drugs and alcohol are a part of that experience. Not to the point of addiction or anything, but most people have it as a part of growing up, in their life or a friend's life."
Boys and Girls in America is out now on Vagrant. The Hold Steady play Temple Bar Music Centre, Dublin on February 27th
