Meet the new Boss...?

A lot of hubub has been made in the press about The Killers' Brendan Flowers' attempt to take over the wheel of Springsteen's Pink Cadillac and bring the E Street Band's sound to Sam's Town (apparently a suburb of Vegas). While his attempts are admirable, it is clear from the sound of his band's new CD that his ambition is much more expansive than his talent. Flowers' does occasionally succeed at conjuring the ghosts' of Springsteen's anti-heroes and Americana archetypes, if not the characters themselves. The arrangements, however, feel like those of a wedding and bar mitzvah 80s-cover band rehearsing for their first wake. When the music does rise to the heights of Flowers' sentiments, he is the one who seems lost--calling on the biblical and automotive metaphors favored by Springsteen without, seemingly, having any idea as to how they might apply.

The indie world, on the other hand, has been busy trumpeting the Boss-y posture and poses of Craig Finn and his band, The Hold Steady. Their new album, Boys and Girls in America (streaming at http://www.vagrant.com/holdsteady_listeningparty/) does come much closer to that old Springsteen sentiment. It starts with their sound, a bit rougher around the edges than the E-Street band but capable of capturing that rising emotional tide that Springsteen likes to ride off into the sunset. Where the Killers try to get to the heart of the Springsteen sound through keyboard washes and synthesized horns, The Hold Steady stacks piano and organ over meaty guitar riffs and heavy drums--and the effect approximates Darkness on the Edge of Town or The Rising without lapsing into out-and-out mimickry. Finn's vocals are much more worn and less invigorated than the Boss, but the lyrical intensity and aspirations are similar. Instead of rebels and their cars, Finn's primary obsessions are Catholics and their drugs. Where Springsteen's protagonists often seem to be pursuing a mythic America they've heard-tell of about but never seen--Finn's protagonists aren't looking for anything more than chemically-enhanced love affairs.

Of the two, the Hold Steady fairs much better in their pursuit of a grand rock-and-roll tradition. It will be interesting to see if these two albums are the forerunners of a new, big Sincerity in American rock after so many years of irony. It also may be a bit troubling--the most obvious aspect of Springsteen's music that's missing from both bands' albums is the lack of a grand optimism. Even when their pursuits were desperate, tragic, dillusional or just pathetic, the Boss' characters were always in search of the American dream and a little piece of the country where they could live it out. The characters in Finn's and Flowers' America seem to have no concept of a better world or even the dream of on. Each seems to live for the moment and seem only to be searching for the best high they can find--be it in a bag of cocaine, a tab of ecstacy, a rock festival, or the arms of someone they one day might be able to love. Personally, I worry that it is not a lack of vision (and it certainly isn't a lack of ambition) that has lead either lyricist to create such transient and vacant characters but, perhaps, the loss of an America worth dreaming about.