- Almost two decades ago, on their first album, The Hold Steady sang how “certain songs get scratched into your soul”. There’s always been an element of irony to their brand of classic rock tales of misadventure; but you never doubted that at some level they aimed to be one of those bands like those they have referenced in their own lyrics – not chart toppers maybe, but at least cult classics.

Whatever else you might think of them, you’d have to say they have succeeded at that. Five albums and fifteen years since their last great record, the release of The Price Of Progress has spawned an abundance of reviews on the internet - every literate rock nerd queuing up to pen their thoughts on it.

I’m looking at myself when I say that too – between the band itself and associated solo albums, this is the fifth Hold Steady record I have reviewed in the last four years. None of them I have expected to hit me the way those first few albums did, but I have built such an attachment to the band that not listening to each new release is unthinkable.

So let’s turn to album number nine The Price Of Progress then. It’s a bit more upbeat and a bit more compelling than 2021’s Open Door Policy, but no real musical surprises – mostly the kind of grandiose bar room rock we are accustomed to. Each song is a self-contained short story, though sometimes it takes a few close listens to pick up exactly what is happening.

The best songs, in terms of the lyrics and the catchiest hooks, come in the first half. Sideways Skull is a tale of a woman who dreams of living out her rock’n’roll fantasies even while institutionalised, with the great hook “it’s hard to fully rock in a halfway house”. Carlos is Crying depicts the titular character having a breakdown amongst his buddies at the pub, and Sixers narrates an insomniac seeking out an unlikely connection with her neighbour in the flat upstairs.

The second half of the album fails to grab the attention in the same way despite some interesting concepts - an ageing rockstar doing a gig at a political rally for a foreign dictator, or tourists looking for thrills off the beaten path by seeking out a guerilla militia.

So it all adds up to another not quite classic Hold Steady album, but even these days you couldn’t say there’s anybody else who does the band’s particular niche as well as they do. They’ve given us diehards enough reason to keep hanging on for the next one anyway, which you will probably see me reviewing at some point in the future.

What can you say? The band, the fans and the characters in the songs have all got older, but The Hold Steady are for the true believers. There’s an element in self-parody in these middle-aged guys rocking out to the lyrics of Sideways Skull – a tale of true rock’n’roll burnouts. The chorus is classic Craig Finn eye for humourous lyrical detail with its “faded denim with buttons and badges... jacket held together by the rock band patches”. But the key Hold Steady line, and the take away message is “the trick is to not get cynical”.

- Andy Paine.