Ready Art Brut? Ready!

After leaving Wednesday night's Jens Lekman show with a huge smile on my face, I left Thursday's Hold Steady/Art Brut party drenched in sweat and with shredded vocal chords. It's not every day that you get to see your favorite American band and your favorite British band sharing the stage, so it was a pretty special night. It was one of the shows where you leave the front of the stage bleeding, but it's from someone trying to hug you instead of moshing. The Hold Steady played a new song called "Stay Positive," which in addition to rocking super hard, really summarized the whole feel of the night.

Art Brut was accompanied by a Powerpoint projected behind them with all of the song titles and the occasional lyric thrown in for emphasis. Eddie Argos seems to have added some new stage moves since the band last came to Austin, but he still pulled out the classics like the microphone cord jump rope. Now with another album's worth of tasty meta-punk, Art Brut proved once again that there's no cooler band in the world. For all that's written about how talentless they are, Jasper Future and Ian Catskilkin are a mighty fine guitar duo. As I think he does at every show, Argos flung himself into the crowd during "Modern Art," but the cool thing about this time is that I was close enough for him to give me a big, nasty, sweaty hug. Highlights were "Emily Kane," which I think is one of the most genuine love songs written this decade, "Post-Soothing Out," and a "Good Weekend"/"Formed a Band" medley which closed out the set. For a second I was concerned that The Hold Steady wouldn't be able to match up to Art Brut's level of rocktitude, but then I remembered that they were the Hold Steady and I punched myself in the face.

The Hold Steady established that they were about to take us on a sleazy journey as soon as they walked onstage, each equipped with a different adult beverage, ranging from Tad Kubler's handle of Jim Beam to Franz Nikola's bottle of fine chardonnay to match his vest and infamous moustache. Craig Finn seemed a little bit more dancey than usual, which only added to the positive energy in the packed La Zona Rosa. The set leaned heavily on Boys and Girls in America, but they threw in old classics like "Your Little Hoodrat Friend" and "The Swish." Less dependent on schtick than Art Brut, The Hold Steady made it feel like we were all a bunch of friends drinking together, which essentially we were. There were about 4 new songs thrown into the mix which seemed to continue the band' s route towards classic rock. Craig Finn kept banter to a minimum which was kinda lame, but Galen Polivka picked up the slack by throwing dollar bills and cigarettes into the crowd. The encore was all Almost Killed Me material, closing as always with "Killer Parties," which is a song that I always forget how much I love.

Certainly ranks among the top shows since I've started going to UT. The next big one will be Dinosaur Jr., so there's a good chance that it'll be on par with this one. More importantly, though, LSU is number one again and Thanksgiving is on Thursday.

Turkey...stuffing...beer...tiiiiiight.