I spent much of my 5-day vacation on Long Island last week trying to figure out the right song to link to the trip. The problem, for my college-damaged memory, is that the year I spent there was the beginning of a stretch of pseudo-laziness, mostly in tracking and obsessing over my listening habits. I was head-long into turning myself into a community reporter. What the hell did I need to waste time on anything beyond just listening to great records?
Regrets aside, what I remember is "With Teeth," "American Idiot," "The Empire Strikes First," "To The Five Boroughs," and an endless stream of burned mix CDs, though what, exactly, was on them is long gone. Until, that is, one of my absolute favorite tracks from The Hold Steady hit my iPod yesterday while running errands yesterday and it hit me: Two tracks from The Hold Steady, ripped from magazine samplers, spent a lot of time on repeat in my car while driving up and down the North Fork and around Riverhead during those 12 months.
As I've written previously, I hold Separation Sunday up as the high water mark for The Hold Steady, despite how good an album Boys and Girls In America turned out to be. I'm hopeful that these guys can turn out another album that lives up to either. Maybe they should record it somewhere other than Brooklyn, just like those two classics. Not that I would blame them if they ignore the suggestion.
Buy Separation Sunday at Shockhound.
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