An album length concept, rambling, slurring soap opera from what sounds like a bar fly who couldn't really give two shit whether he sings in time with his band...infact I think they just try to follow his flights of fancy about drunks and pimps, ressurections and overdoses....like Mark-E-Smith meets Bukowski and Kerouac in an East-side speakeasy.

Huge, raining guitar riffs, a total disregard for chorus timing or structure in general...just banging it out like the E-Street band meets the Stones with a mouthful of cigarette butts and bloodsoaked sawdust. It's freakin' great, and you should make it your next LP purchase.

If you're looking at this becuase you liked Boys and Girls, then you should go ahead and get it. Excellent though Boys and Girls is, I slightly prefer this. The formula is pretty much the same, but Separation Sunday seems to give no ground at all to any thoughts of commercial viability (there's no whoas or funny keyboard figures in the choruses) and I think that improves things, by making the whole a bit purer and more coherent.
On top of that, Cattle and Creeping Things is one of the best things I've heard in ages - musically and lyrically it's spot on, and there's plenty of other great riffs and smarty-pants wordplay on here too.
So if you like your rawk music with a brain on it, do yourself a favour and get this.

This is an album that has a lot going for it, and is something slightly different that attracts me to it. As an entire album it is sublime, each track leads into another convincingly. Definitely an album and band that is very easy to fall in love with and for me the best of The Hold Steady's 3 albums to be introduced to.

If you're over 30 buy this cd at your peril. You are in danger of developing the kind of devotion to the hold steady that you first had for bands when you were a teenager. They conjure up a springsteen meets kerouac emotion that captures what's great about rock and roll. Craig Finn is surely the best lyricist around - dense, poetic and evocative. Get this, then buy Boys And Girls In America, then - most importantly - see them live.

Not sure why these guys don't have a larger following. "Damn right I'll rise again" one of my favourite one-liners from any song. This is a no brainer decision to buy.