Finn holds not so steady: High-energy beats move crowd

There's a line in a Ben Folds song that describes "visions of pills that put you in a loving trance/that make it possible for all white boys to dance." On Wednesday night at The Parish, Craig Finn, frontman for The Hold Steady, accomplished the same thing as Folds' pills, but without all the nasty side effects.

Finn looks like David Sedaris and belts out lyrics like Bruce Springsteen. When he doesn't have a guitar strapped around his neck, Finn is the embodiment of those who have ever felt the need to move their bodies to the music without being entirely sure of how to go about it. He flails his arms, he jumps, he snaps his fingers, he bounces, he screams. These on-stage antics allowed The Hold Steady's predominantly white, male audience to swing their limbs and stomp their feet through the band's 100-minute set.

With the first chords of "Constructive Summer," the band made it clear that the audience was in for a night of loud, up-tempo rock 'n' roll that would leave ears ringing and minds muddled come Thursday morning.

Finn's vocals drive many of his band's songs. Unfortunately, for much of the night, these vocals came out distorted and difficult to understand against the backdrop of fuzzy, thrashing guitars. Finn is an excellent storyteller. The Hold Steady's lyrics - "me and my friends are like double-whiskey-Coke-no-ice/we drink along in double time; might drink too much, but we feel fine" - evoke the same atmosphere their concert created, that of an optimistic, boozy celebration. When the band slowed down, briefly, for songs like "Killer Parties" and the opening verses of "Don't Let Me Explode," Finn's lyrics rose out of the noise and added to the "have a good time and damn the rest" vibe.

The physical presence of the guitar and drums made up for the distorted vocals. Each riff and beat that came out of the amplifiers ran through the floor, shoes and spine, making the show a visceral experience.

At the end of the night, Finn thanked the crowd for the joy they provided him. He admitted that he thanks the audience at every show the band plays but that his gratitude is not always sincere. The kind of joy running through Finn's body and through the audience as a whole - the kind that makes a man snap, twitch, jump and shout - would be hard to fake.

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