The Hold Steady share new song ‘Sixers’
New York heartland rock forefathers The Hold Steady are gearing up for the release of their ninth studio album, The Price of Progress. To preview the upcoming LP, the group has shared a brand new single from the album called ‘Sixers’.
After hearing the abrasive embrace of post-punk on their previous single ‘Sideways Skull’, ‘Sixers’ sees the band reclaiming some of their classic rock DNA. Repositioning themselves as the kings of storytelling songs, ‘Sixers’ lays out some characters that will be all-too-familiar to any of us who had to make some new friends during the earliest days of the Covid-19 lockdown.
“‘Sixers’ was written in the first days of the pandemic,” Craig Finn shares in a statement. “It’s basically a song about knowing your neighbors. Two young professionals meet up in their building late on a Friday night and spend the weekend partying together. They try to find a love connection, but it’s not quite there. It’s hard to make friends when your job is so demanding. Tad and Steve chime in with some beautiful guitar harmonies.”
This is right within The Hold Steady’s wheelhouse: a song with some real-life characters, sly social commentary, and some off-the-wall references. All the while, the guitar and keyboard attack from Tad Kluber, Steve Selvidge, and Franz Nicolay bring it all back to that familiar E Street Band territory that The Hold Steady embodies so well.
While it might not be anything revolutionary, ‘Sixers’ is a welcome return to the kind of music that The Hold Steady excel at. I’m all for artistic exploration, but I’m also glad it seems like the band got it out of their system on ‘Sideways Skull’. Anthemic literary rock is a tough niche to stay in all your life, but it’s truly where The Hold Steady seems most comfortable and confident. As someone who greatly enjoys the nerdier, more literate side of rock music, I love when The Hold Steady goes full bore in that direction.
So will The Price of Progress be a mix of these two styles? Only time will tell. In the meantime, if you’re in the Pacific Northwest, check out the We Can Get Together weekend that is set to kick off in Portland on April 27th. The mini-festival will feature Finn doing a live version of his podcast That’s How I Remember It, plus Nicolay doing Q+A’s on his books while Kubler and Selvidge host a guitar workshop. For die-hard fans, what more could you want from The Hold Steady?
Check out the audio for ‘Sixers’ down below. The Price of Progress is set for a March 31st release.
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