The best album i have bought since Soundtrack of Our Lives' "Behin The Music". Thin Lizzy style riffs and the odd solo but with a definite Lou Reedy New York feel. A proper old fashioned album, with a distinct sound running through it but without all the songs being the same.

The first step on the climb up to the mighty peak that is Boys And Girls In America. All Rick Nielson riffs, Phil Lynott basslines with the ramshackle beauty of The Replacements, the Hold Steady's first album seems to appear fully formed. The lyrics tumbling out over themselves, sometimes at odds with the music the band is playing, sketching out the dramas of Charlemagne and Holly et al that would be more fully fleshed out in the street-opera of their next album Separation Sunday. This is brilliant stuff only kept to 4 stars instead of the maximum because Franz Nicolay's keyboards only appear infrequently and because the next two albums are EVEN BETTER. Once you've listened to it and immersed yourself in its world it's also fun to count how many times Craig Finn namechecks the Hold Steady - I lost count.

Oh me, oh my. I've tried with this album, I really have. Everything it hopes to be is just what I was after, but so little follows-through. It's like trying to take a big dump when you have to be somewhere and don't have much time, but only manage to squeeze out a little few squitters.

Musically it is fine. Sludgey, dirty, heavy guitars and simplistic yet satisfying riffs. And whatshisface's voice: some may hate it, I like it.

One of the main problems, for me, is that the opening track is just too good. Such an audacious album opener, let alone career opener, full of beautiful imagistic lyrics spanning much of the 20th century, wry and affecting. Actually, this track sums up much of my problem with the album: after the brilliance of the first part of the song, we get irritating and cringeworthy harping about "Starting a band, man." It happens throughout. Next to penetrating, witty and often vicious lines there are awful, embarassingly bad idiocies. It's a shame. Like rain on a new haircut. (I, incidentally, need a haircut.)

So, it is almost good. Almost enjoyable. Almost good enough to make up for its multiple flaws with its not so multiple successes. Just not quite enough. When the lyrics are on form this is a compelling record, engaging like a good short story, gritty or something. I hate that word. When it's bad it's like listening to a mid-life crisis wearing leather playing a flying-V, a combover wilting under a cheap, flickering spotlight.