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The Hold Steady performs "Your Little Hoodrat Friend"

If you picked up ARTVOICE’s final issue of 2005, you saw coverboys the Hold Steady peering at you. The Brooklyn-based band earned AV’s album of the year honors for 2005 with the potent Separation Sunday (French Kiss), a pot bubbling over with religion, drugs, sex, teen angst and ultimate redemption, with an unmistakable bark and vicious rock bite. Vocalist/songwriter Craig Finn’s fictional narrator crafts streetwise parables of good and bad where everyday angels and demons can sometimes be hard to tell apart. The record is rock opera with a style so gritty and refreshingly bold that it belies that tired old tag. While the Hold Steady’s charged guitar attacks and knack for storytelling have earned regular comparisons to Springsteen and the E. Street Band, they seem to be lapping even Bruce and company in the old “working class work ethic” department. Within just one calendar year of the release of the masterful Separation Sunday, the band has a fresh new label deal and is due to release the follow up, Boys and Girls In America on Vagrant Records in October. They’re sure to debut this new material in their combustible and combative live set on Wednesday, after opening acts Semi-Tough and Exit Strategy.

Wednesday, August 2 at 8pm. Mohawk Place, 47 E. Mohawk St (855-3931)

www.mohawkplace.com. $10