The Hold Steady: "Atlantic City"

People like Bruce Springsteen can’t be trusted with their own legacy. It’s not enough that we get shit like “Outlaw Pete” and “Queen of the Supermarket,” now the Boss nominates perhaps the most obvious band to cover his song. It’s a trend that holds true throughout the War Child comp (obligatory urge to reader to go out and buy it anyway because it’s for a good cause): classic artists picking watered-down versions of themselves to cover their own material. The Clash couldn’t find a better contemporary representative of their ska-punk-reggae than Lily Allen? The Stooges and the Ramones couldn’t dig deeper than Peaches and Yeah Yeah Yeahs for snot-nosed DIY aggression? Bob Dylan and Joy Division searched for iconoclastic radical reinterpretations of their music in…Beck and Hot Chip?

Perhaps the easiest answer is that decades past their prime these artists don’t really pay attention to new music anymore, but perhaps they’re also careful not to pick bands that are liable to upstage them. In any case, in the context of the album Springsteen picking the Hold Steady doesn’t seem like the worst offender; as far as equally indebted bands, he could’ve opted for the Killers or Titus Andronicus. And I get that there’s a time and place to elevate teenage malaise and uncertainty into big arena rock, even if I tend to think Craig Finn is staging these elaborate narratives to avoid actually dealing with his own aging.

But the band could’ve learned something from Nebraska (1982), an album that found its author finally questioning the degree to which his working class positivity, youthful abandon and overwhelmingly full sound were actually getting through to his audience; an album that came to terms with its age (the failed hopes of the Carter regime, the dawn of neo-conservatism and the religious right) in a way that mocks “Working on a Dream.” Instead the band opts to re-imagine Springsteen’s most distinct break from his established sound as if it were a track from any of his previous albums. It starts out as hushed as the original, but only to provide a contrast for when the drums, guitar and sax break through: recasting “Put your makeup on and your hair up pretty” as a call to self-abandonment in the face of the original’s muffled desperation.

Sure there was some hope in the line “Maybe everything that dies / Someday comes back,” but it came off as a doubtful, last-ditch attempt to persuade the female object of the song to join him in what would probably end up being his undoing. If the Hold Steady can’t find a better scenario to re-cast as an upbeat rallying cry, then maybe this newfound sense of optimism that Springsteen himself has latched onto really is a bust.