This album has been submitted by a user and is not included in any edition of the book.
Boys and Girls in America is the third studio album by the Hold Steady, released on October 3, 2006, by Vagrant Records. On August 18, 2006, first single "Chips Ahoy!" was released as a free download from music site Pitchfork Media. The second single, "Stuck Between Stations" began to appear on campus radio playlists in November 2006. Backing vocals for the track "Chillout Tent" are provided by Soul Asylum's Dave Pirner and the Reputation's Elizabeth Elmore. Dana Kletter (ex-Blackgirls, Dear Enemy, and Hole's Live Through This) contributed backing vocals to "Chips Ahoy!", "You Can Make Him Like You", and "First Night". The album title is a line taken from the opening lines of the song "Stuck Between Stations" ("There are nights when I think that Sal Paradise was right/Boys and girls in America have such a sad time together"), which in turn refers to a quote from American novelist and poet Jack Kerouac's 1957 novel On the Road and its narrator, Sal Paradise. The title is repeated in the lyrics in "First Night." The album received a metascore of 85 out of 100 on Metacritic, making it tied with four other albums for the 12th best-reviewed album of 2006. Magnet and The Onion's AV Club named it the best album of 2006. Pitchfork rated Boys and Girls in America 9.4 out of 10, and named it the fifth-best album of the year. They later ranked it as the 64th best album of the decade.
Okay so I've definitely heard this entire album before. Where? I don't know. I've never heard of this band, this album, or any of the album track titles. Why do I know every single track? Where I was I in 2016? Anyway it's good, if a little samey. High 3 low 4.
Noo, why this again :'( 1
Wasn't this already on the original list? Maybe it was one of the ones that was mistakenly added early in the project. Either way, happy to listen to it again as I love this album. 4 stars.
Strange, I already had this early on with the User Submitted list and enjoyed it, giving 4 stars.
Something's up with this one, as I already reviewed it about 3 months ago. Gave it a 3. As I said back then... musically on point, highly listenable, a bit derivative. Fave Songs: Stuck Between Stations, Hot Soft Light, Party Pit, Chips Ahoy!, Massive Nights
People love this band and I certainly never mind listening to the music, but I do find it overly derivative without being particularly innovative. The drunk and druggy lyrics also do very little for me at this point in my life.
Rating: 6/10
Mediocre
Ever wanted to know what the Dropkick Murphys would sound like if they made bland, feelgood hipster indie rock? No, me either. 2/5.
The kind of music you would hear playing at an Applebee’s or other chain restaurant in a misguided attempt to seem hip. The instrumentals were dated to begin with, and the raspy, muttering vocals do nothing to bring the tracks together. Some very repetitive songwriting as well, if you don’t know how to write a bridge/coda then don’t say the same lyric twenty times over to end a track!
Nothing special
nice music, don't get on with the singer's voice 1.8
In a previous album of theirs I had already mentioned that the interpreter was a failure and that the musicians were outstanding, so I can't say more than the pattern is repeated, one annihilates the other. I really don't know why you like this group so much.