“Two records ago we made Thrashing Thru The Passion,” The Hold Steady singer Craig Finn explains, “a record that was very piecemeal, putting out the songs as we recorded them and then compiling them when we had enough for an album. The last one, Open Door Policy [2021], we said let’s make an album, and this seemed like an extension of that.”
Taking a similar companion-piece approach as their celebrated 2006-08 era of Boys And Girls In America and Stay Positive, The Hold Steady’s ninth album, The Price Of Progress, revisited its precursor’s studio and has the same producer (Josh Kaufman), but brings fresh tones of funk and psych-rock to their ever-raging bar-band party – as well as an air of modern desperation to its stories of postrehab rockers, arguing drifters and revolution tourists.
