The Hold Steady has been a preeminent indie rock group of this century, as they have regularly put out rock-solid albums between 2004 and now. Their latest, Open Door Policy, is a new 2021 release, and now they’ve promoted it with a performance on Late Night With Seth Meyers. The band brought their recent single “Family Farm” to the show. They gave a dynamic performance, with understated verses led by Craig Finn’s vocals, sandwiched between energetic blasts of guitar and horns.
Craig Finn previously told Apple Music of the song, “The lyrics mention the Eddie Van Halen guitar solo in ‘Eruption,’ and here we are when the record’s released and Eddie Van Halen has passed. And I think that the reason I love this and why I bring this up is because a lot of people talk about things like Springsteen or The Replacements when they talk about The Hold Steady. But in some ways, Van Halen was also a big influence. There’s one guy who’s kind of talking or yelling, and there’s another guy playing a lot of guitar solos.”
Meanwhile, the band recently sat down with Uproxx and Finn told us of their new album, “I’m super excited about it, but I’ve struggled to tell people what’s different about it. I think there’s been a continuation of figuring out this six-piece line-up and where everything goes and I think that that’s a huge part of the story. It’s allowed us to be more expansive musically than maybe we have in the past. There’s maybe a little bit more of headphone moments. There’s this weird scraping of guitars, some weird little noises that brought something we haven’t done before.”
Watch the band perform “Family Farm” above.
