Last night saw The Hold Steady return to Toronto for their first show since the release of their latest album Stay Postive. The band came along with Drive-By Truckers as part of the Rock + Roll Means Well tour.The Phoenix was the venue, which is never a good thing. The acoustics in the place are pretty ugly, causing feedback and reverb that tends to drown out much of the nuance on stage. The sound man didn't do the band any favours as he tried to compensate by merely cranking everything up. The result was distortion of pretty much everything and the complete drowning out of some elements, like the accordion on "Lord, I'm Discouraged". It's called balance, look it up.
Despite that Craig Finn was in fine form with his herky jerky dancing and strong connection with the audience, even though more witty banter would have been welcomed.
The set drew heavily on Stay Positive and included the title track, "Sequestered In Memphis", Navy Sheets", "Magazines", "A Joke About Jamaica", "Constructive Summer" and "Slapped Actress". There were only a handful of songs from the band's breakout Boys and Girls In America: "Stuck Between Stations", "Chips Ahoy!", "Same Kooks", and the b-side "Girls Like Status".
A number of older tracks were mixed in as well. The band drew upon their back catalogue to give us "The Swish", "Most People Are DJs", and "Banging Camp".
Drive-By Truckers set was also plagued by the sound issues. Even on more mellow country tracks the squeal was distracting.
Mike Cooley, Patterson Hood, and Shonna Tucker all took turns on lead vocals as the band persevered however to give us a stellar "Sink Hole" and a righteous "The Righteous Path" among others.
It wasn't the best the bands can give us, but the effort and quality of the songs made it a positive night.
7.5
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