Hold Steady frontman Craig Finn’s always had a bit of a soft spot for sentimental, almost cheesy stuff. Teenage love, characters who like to hang out and listen to records and go to concerts and parties are big concerns in his songs. The Hold Steady’s latest album, Heaven Is Whenever, seems to revel mostly in this territory. Gone are the druggies and hoodrats and ‘killer parties’ of previous discs, instead, at the heart of Heaven Is Whenever, it’s the salvation that kids find in rock n’ roll music that Finn seems predominantly concerned with. The result is The Hold Steady’s most harmless album, but in some ways also their warmest, as though Finn wrote the album more interested in himself connecting directly with adolescents than telling compelling tales likely derived from his own adolescence. “I know what you’re going through/I had to go through that too,” he sings in “Soft In The Center,” addressing kids directly like some kind of indie-rock father figure. 
The approach, however, is double-edged: there’s nothing here as remotely intense and hard hitting as something like “Cattle and the Creeping Things” or exciting as “Chips Ahoy!” Finn’s host of kookie characters are still around, but he doesn’t name them directly, and the exquisite details he’s always been so gifted at relating are largely absent. It’s not so much that the album is lyrically weak, as it is simply not as incredibly strong as other Hold Steady albums. On the other hand, on songs like “We Can Get Together” Finn still unleashes showstopping lines like, “Heaven is whenever/We can get together/And listen to your records.” And in the same song, the displacement of the line: “He wasn’t just the drummer/He was the singer’s younger brother/I still spin that single/But it don’t sound that simple anymore,” gives it an ominous weight as you wonder what happened to the drummer, and why did it affect Finn so much to think that he was “someone’s younger brother?”
Musically, Heaven Is Whenever might be The Hold Steady’s strongest and most consistent album. The choruses are bigger and better than ever, especially in “Soft In The Center” and “Rock Problems,” and then embellishments like the killer harmonic guitar solo in the latter track and the gorgeous slow-dance waltz that closes “We Can Get Together” top things off wonderfully. The Hold Steady are still writing songs with three or four big chords, but they’ve managed to use them well throughout the album.
Depending on what the person listening likes most about The Hold Steady, Heaven Is Whenever could be either their favorite or least favorite album. Even for those who might think that the songs lack the punchiness of an earlier, more street-wise Hold Steady, they lack none of the band’s big heart.
Track Listing:
1. The Sweet Part of the City
2. Soft in the Center
3. The Weekenders
4. The Smidge
5. Rock Problems
6. We Can Get Together
7. Hurricane J
8. Barely Breathing
9. Our Whole Lives
10. A Slight Discomfort
