The Hold Steady - Roundhouse, London - Wednesday 17th December 2008

After almost a year of not having seen them, and a near miss when they postponed this gig from October, I went along to see the new, improved Hold Steady. With a new album out this year, and one which received a warm critical reception too, the band are inching towards the more widespread success that their music and lyrics deserve. This show was their biggest ever headline gig, an event which London has hosted before, on the band's rise.

We got into the venue very early for some strange reason, to find the main room almost totally empty. There were a few people bagging a space by the front barrier, but apart from that, there was nobody in the venue. Maybe because The Hold Steady don't often tend to have decent support bands, and that it had been incredibly hard to glean any info about who was opening up for them - so people had no reason to show up early. The support band were called The Mark Inside, and whilst stationed at the bar, their set rather passed me by. I was vaguely aware of a band playing somewhere in the distance, but they seemed utterly unremarkable, they looked like they were trying to look like Kings Of Leon, but didn't seem to have either the charisma or the songs. So, not a huge surprise that all involved seemed determined to keep their appearance a virtual secret!

By the time The Hold Steady came on stage, the venue had filled up nicely, but it was still fairly easy to get a decent place in front of the mixing desk. They kicked off with Banging Camp, before the opening tracks from the current album, Constructive Summer and Sequestered In Memphis made an appearance, to a very enthusiastic response. The band spoke very little to the audience, preferring instead to just crash from one song straight into another. Surprisingly for me, the songs seemed to be drawn fairly evenly from their last 3 albums, with a few from their debut in there as well. So, a career spanning set, in front of an audience who seemed to know even the older stuff - obviously their back catalogue has been selling OK!

All in all, this was an awesome set I thought, the band seemed tight as ever, and the songs were again a perfect soundtrack to a lairy night. The singer was looking as up for it as ever (he has apparently lost weight too, due to all the exertion of being the band's frontman), and as the set progressed, he did start to talk a bit more. Their version of Lord I'm Discouraged, which ended with a solo on a double necked guitar, was suitably over the top and rock and roll; and I loved the version of Your Little Hoodrat Friend that rounded off the main set, and was a real highlight of the show. A minor shock in the encore, that they didn't finish off with Killer Parties, but this was a brilliant show overall, and reminded me how much I'd missed seeing the band over the last year.