Hold Steady and Art Brut at the HUB

Time to do some catching up...

A bit over a week ago I saw the Hold Steady and Art Brut at the HUB Ballroom on the UW campus. The HUB Ballroom is more like a high school cafeteria than a real concert venue -- never attend a concert there unless you must. The whole night would be a battle between the high quality of the bands and the terrible venue.

I showed up a song or two into Art Brut's set, apparently after Eddie Argos had a bit of a piss over the lack of booze and early start time at the HUB. He and his band were busy making it up to the still small but growing crowd. He'd ask, "Ready Art Brut?" and they'd bang their way through another song.

Argos's voice is an acquired taste, but he's in on it, which makes Art Brut all the more entertaining. After a couple songs he asked the sound guys to turn off his monitor, noting that he didn't actually sing, that he was fine with being off key, and that his bandmates really didn't want to hear him. The crowd did, though, and he got them going by jumping off stage and pogo-ing around the with crowd for a song.

As Art Brut ended their set, Argos apologized for his earlier negativity, but apologies were no longer necessary. He was already back in the crowd's good graces.

I expected Art Brut to be a good opening act, but with songs like "Emily Kane" and "Good Weekend" they made it more of a twin bill than I expected.

Next up was the headliner, The Hold Steady, one of my favorite, most literate bands. I'd seen the Hold Steady before, so I mostly knew what to expect, especially Craig Finn's hyperkinetic stage presence and twitchy white boy dancing.

I stood at the back of the room last time, so this time I got right up from -- close enough to see the Finn's spit fly, Franz Nicolay's tooth pick dance around his mouth, and Tad Kubler's fingers all over his guitar. Before forming the Hold Steady Kubler and Finn played together in Lifter Puller, and I noticed a camaraderie between them that I was surprised to have missed before.

They played a good mix of their albums, focusing less on Boys and Girls than they did on the last tour, and even trying out a couple new songs. They were particularly on for "Southtown Girls," which has become one of my favorites, in no small part because I grew up a few miles from Southtown Mall and because Nicollet, Lyndale, and Penn were the extent of my geography at a young age.

Unfortunately the sound was a mess for most of the night. "Massive Nights" sounded awful, the sing-along chorus turning into a muddled yell. And there were more stage problems, like the lights causing one of the monitors to start smoking.

The band dwelled on the lack of drinks at the HUB, which was understandable but almost sad as stage banter. The Hold Steady are a bar band, the kind of group you want to see with a drink in your hand, but they're also one of the best live bands around and have at least one of the best albums of the decade. If you can't enjoy them sober, drunk, or high, there's something wrong with you.

I guess that's a good way to summarize the night for me: Despite all the problems with the venue, it was still a good show by really good performers. I left with a T-shirt featuring the Hold Steady's take on the old Twins logo, firmly identifying with my fellow former Minneapolitans and quite content that I'd seen two bands in their prime.