How a Resurrection Really Feels: 20 Years of 'Separation Sunday'
Lord, to be 33 forever.
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The first time I saw The Hold Steady, I didn’t realize that I was seeing the beginning of something special, something that would become a yearly ritual for me. I didn’t know that I’d spend the rest of that decade of my life welcoming my winters at Brooklyn Bowl in a sea of strangers, singing songs about boys and girls in America. I didn’t know that I’d spend many days washing confetti out of my hair. I didn’t know that I’d become a member of the Unified Scene. At that time, I just knew that I really wanted to hear “Your Little Hoodrat Friend” live.
At times, I really wish I could’ve seen The Hold Steady during their early years. They emerged during the 2000s rock revival in New York City. The year that I read Meet Me In the Bathroom, I wanted nothing more than to live in that time and see that version of the city. Still, most of the bands that have become signifiers for that era (The Strokes, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, and LCD Soundsystem) have certainly felt a little too cool for me. Instead, The Hold Steady (and The National) have become the two NYC rock revivalists that I’ve claimed as my own. The Hold Steady became a part of my diet, scratched into my soul, just as singer Craig Finn had prophesized on their first album.
The first Hold Steady songs that I heard didn’t really connect with me. I remember giving some songs from Teeth Dreams a shot as it showed up in a year-end list. As someone who’s been a Hold Steady fan for at least a third of my life now, I can confidently say that it’s the Hold Steady record I listen to the least. The next song I heard was “Girls Like Status,” after hearing Wonder Years frontman Dan Campbell mention it in an interview. That one also didn’t really connect with me. Eventually, I gave Separation Sunday a listen, and “Your Little Hoodrat Friend,” became an immediate standout.
Though “Your Little Hoodrat Friend” is true to that classic rock-inspired indie sound that The Hold Steady cut their teeth on, it’s essentially a pop-punk song. Finn and Tad Kubler palm mute in the verses, and Franz Nicolay’s keyboards make the chorus swell. At this point, I didn’t know anything about Holly, Charlamagne, or Gideon. In fact, I barely even knew what a “hoodrat” was. One of my college friends would refer to his neighborhood pals as his “hoodrat friends” though, so it felt like a good song to put on when we were pounding back Pabst Blue Ribbons.
When The Hold Steady released Separation Sunday 20 years ago this weekend, I was too young to listen to them. I was in 5th grade, and while I know that some members of the Unified Scene have gotten their kids started very young, 10 is a little too young for someone who has only just begun to listen to Led Zeppelin, AC/DC, and Green Day. Still, I would say that those bands laid the groundwork for my eventual fandom.
While I don’t really consider THS to be a punk band, their lineage is there. Finn regularly shouts out hardcore bands in his lyrics, and the bridge to “Stay Positive” is their version of a breakdown. Still, Separation Sunday is probably where they sound their most punk rock. Classic rock riffs permeate tunes like “Stevie Nix” and “How a Resurrection Really Feels,” but there’s a lot of power chords chugging along in “Multitude of Casualties” or “Cattle and the Creeping Things.” I also think that the underlying sense of hope in “Little Hoodrat Friend” or “Resurrection” were laying the groundwork for records like The Upsides or much of Frank Turner’s work.
Tiny little text, etched into her neck
It said, “Jesus lived and died for all your sins.”
She’s got blue-black, and it’s scratched into her lower back
Says, “Damn right, I’ll rise again.”
At this point in my life, I’m much farther removed from my Catholic school days than I was when I first heard Separation Sunday. At this point, I’ve been away from the church longer than I really felt like a part of it. Still, Separation Sunday did give voice to the complicated feelings that I had as a young adult who was still trying to grapple with faith.
Around the time that I was falling in love with THS, I was also getting into the classics with my English degree. I started looking for holiness in unconventional places after reading Allen Ginsberg’s “Footnote to Howl” or trying to take Catholicism seriously after learning that Ernest Hemingway had converted. While neither totally stuck, I do think that hearing stories about broken people finding faith in drugs, alcohol, and Stevie Nicks songs did give myself some license to overdo things in the search of a resurrection.
While I came to Separation Sunday in search of reckless abandon, I’ve come to learn that Holly, Charlamagne, and Gideon are ultimately broken people. They’re people who struggle who are frozen in time at this difficult point in life. In a recent Uproxx interview, Finn talked about how his characters age with him, but the characters from this album have remained probably his most beloved, even more so than those from Boys and Girls in America.
I think that those characters continue to resonate, because as people in America, we’re always looking for some sense of escape. By the time that the album ends on “How a Resurrection Really Feels,” you start to realize that being brought back isn’t always some immaculate affair. There’s a lot of pain, heartache, and discomfort that’s going to come with it. Jesus died on the cross. Holly got strung out, decimated by life, and eventually found her way to a broken-down Easter mass.
While we’re 20 years removed from that album, I think that it continues to resonate, because so many people feel just as lost now as they ever will. While I may not self-medicate by drinking gin from a jam jar, I feel just as confused and worried as I did when I first fell in love with Separation Sunday. We’re entering a recession. The job market is in the toilet. I am preparing for jobs that I’m not as enthused about. While I’m not planning on ripping off a cross from anyone in the city or nodding off in matinees, I definitely feel afraid most nights. As I prepare for my own resurrection, I’m not necessarily thinking about how glorious and everlasting it will be. Rather, I’m filled with dread, and I know that it’s going to be painful. Still, I will carry through, strung out but experienced, just like this album taught me to.