The Hold Steady The Price of Progress LP

TAS Rated 4/5 Music, 4/5 Sonics in the July/August 2023 Issue of The Absolute Sound!

Formed in 2003, The Hold Steady have released eight albums, numerous singles and played over 1,000 shows. The Price of Progress is the ninth studio album from the group, released on the band's Positive Jams label via Thirty Tigers.

The Price of Progress arrives as The Hold Steady mark the 20th anniversary of their foundation, bringing new ideas, sounds, and textures to a still-evolving canon of nine studio album releases that began with 2004's Almost Killed Me. The album was produced by longtime collaborator Josh Kaufman at The Clubhouse in Rhinebeck, NY, and mixed by D. James Goodwin. The Price of Progress stands as their most sonically expansive record thus far, while also remaining unmistakably The Hold Steady, showcasing narrative rock 'n' roll tales of ordinary people struggling and surviving in a modern world.

The front and back of the album cover feature photographs by renowned Minneapolis-based photographer Alec Soth.

After 20 years as a band, this 2023 album is peak THS and features the core line up of Bobby Drake (drums), Craig Finn (vocals), Tad Kubler (guitar, vocals), Franz Nicolay (keyboards, vocals), Galen Polivka (bass), and Steve Selvidge (guitar, vocals).

"These are some of the most cinematic songs in The Hold Steady catalog," says Finn, "and the record was a joy to make. I feel like we went somewhere we haven't before, which is a very exciting thing for a band that is two decades into our career."

Between Finn's novelistic eye for dramatic vignettes and the band's full-bore attack featuring guitar, drums, keyboards, and horns, the Hold Steady evoke a muscular, gritty grandeur with cinematic sweep and verve.