The Hold Steady, six albums in, stay the course in career-spanning show at the El Rey Theatre

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By Ben McShane

Touring behind “Teeth Dreams,” their second consecutive lukewarmly received mid-career album, the Hold Steady played for almost two hours at the El Rey Theatre on Tuesday night. With all that time the still-reigning champions of Midwestern indie rock generously dipped into their full six-album catalog. It was to the giddy the surprise of many fans who would have been thrilled just to hear a couple songs written before 2008 – let alone four from 2005’s “Separation Sunday” (“Banging Camp!” “Multitude of Casualties!”) and six from 2006’s “Boys and Girls in America”. (“Citrus! Are you kidding me?!”)

The Hold Steady still played the new stuff though; tracks like “I Hope This Whole Thing Didn’t Frighten You” and “The Ambassador” sound more true to form live than over-mixed by “Teeth Dreams” producer Nick Raskulinecz. And if you’re not supposed to like the new Hold Steady records, then nobody told the people buying tickets to the shows. (To that point, “The Sweet Part of the City” was one of the best-received songs of the set.)

Of course, it wouldn’t be evening worship service at The First Rock Church of Minneapolis without the trademark sermons of Reverend Craig Finn. Led Zeppelin, David Foster Wallace and the subjective truth of rock ’n’ roll were areas of spiritual inquiry on the night’s program. Finn’s parishioners were mostly male and gently rotund, a curious mix of old and young. Reports of the death of rock at the hands of the millennial disco horde have been greatly exaggerated.

It was also the nicest crowd you could imagine. There was no shoving or jockeying for space up front. So warm and friendly was the room that when one ambitious fan jumped on stage, she was kindly tapped down by security rather than hauled off like a felon. That descends directly from the Hold Steady; their “Stay Positive” message hasn’t just stuck – it’s become an active force for good in an increasingly hedonistic music fanscape.

A cynic might say the Hold Steady informally ended when multi-instrumentalist Franz Nicolay left the band in 2010, that all Hold Steady albums and shows since are aren’t as good or valid. There’s something to that.

At times the show seemed a caricature of what Hold Steady shows are supposed to be. As great it was to hear those old “Boys and Girls” and “Separation” songs, they can’t be injected with the same urgency of old. Is Finn’s over-the-top crowd-mugging sometimes at the expense of the music, or necessary to fill the hole Nicolay left four years ago? It’s a secondary issue, really. If the “real” Hold Steady can’t be had in 2014, surely the show Tuesday night was something better. Less sneering, more cheering. All in good fun.

Openers Cheap Girls played a thoroughly enjoyable set reminiscent of the kind of alternative rock that crawled out of mom’s basement onto rock radio 20 years ago, in a time when all the nerdy frontmen rolled their eyes as they sang their own words. More greasy than grungy, melancholy and detached with a secret longing to be sincere. Merge Records might have missed the boat on this one.