The Hold Steady

I'm going to give a tentative "thumbs up" to The Hold Steady. They hail from Brooklyn (by way of the Twin Cities), have a singer that looks like a chubby, balding Tom Scharpling and sounds like Randy Newman. And as Sarah Palin might say they also seem to know their way around a hook also.

Since I immediately tend to write off any band that has even a whiff of tight-pants Williamsburg moonboots hipsterism I was trying to never hear this band, and I was doing pretty well at it too. So what happened? The local NPR station has been playing them and that damn "Subpoenaed in Texas/Sequestered in Memphis" song got me.

For anyone who doesn't believe that the apocalypse is well on its way let me restress these two points: 1) I liked some music that was on NPR and 2) that music was by a Brooklyn hipster band (well at least sort of.)

Photo stolen from here.