(three briefs out of five)

Few albums captured so perfectly the guilty pleasures of perpetual inebriation and the lust experienced most often by the 18-to-25 demographic as Boys and Girls in America, a masterpiece released by The Hold Steady in 2006. Whether it had been decades or mere days since you last shared a drunken smooch with a stranger, the album hit a sweet spot that made the listener simultaneously nostalgic for those feelings – and appalled by the memory.

It was such a good album, in fact, that it probably wasn’t fair of me to expect the band to match or exceed Boys and Girls in America with the follow-up disk, Stay Positive. The hormonal exuberance of Boys and Girls has been replaced by more regret; Stay Positive is the hangover that the Boys and Girls don’t yet see coming.

It’s not because the members of The Hold Steady have grown up – they were on the wrong side of 30 before they landed on anyone’s radar screen – it’s just that front man Craig Finn appears to want to move the narrative forward. And when the besotted actions of the characters have more serious consequences, the storyline isn’t quite as fun.

Finn has a knack for wry storytelling and a clever turn of phrase, and there are too many good lyrics to list. “In bar light/she looked alright/in daylight/she looked desperate” the narrator of “Sequestered in Memphis” explains – presumably to a member of the local constabulary – after a hookup lands him on the wrong side of the law. Other times, he misfires, as on “One for the Cutters,” a cautionary tale which awkwardly asks, “When one townie falls in the forest, can anyone hear it?” “Joke About Jamaica” neatly sums up what the album’s all about:

We were wasps with new wings

Now we’re bugs in the jar

We were hot soft and pure

Now we’re scratched up in scars

Finn lifts a few lines from Boys and Girls in America, and the previous disk is referenced in the album art. “Man, we had some massive nights,” Finn sings, a nod to a wonderful track on that other disk. But Stay Positive is mostly about what came after those massive nights. And that’s mostly the kind of thing you and I don’t want to think about.

There I was – Fourth of July weekend. I had just mounted (oh, behave) the elliptical machine at my fitness center and I was looking for something on my mp3 player to motivate me. Most times I just go with the shuffle, but on this day, I felt like a whole album, start to finish, in order. A friend had loaned me “Different Strokes By Different Strokes,” a Sly and the Family Stone tribute album (sort of). I cued it up and within about 10 seconds of hearing Will.I.Am rapping his way through “Dance To The Music,” I knew I was in trouble. Sorry, but it was tantamount to sacrilege to these ears. With no interest in even hitting skip to hear what Maroon 5 might have done to “Everyday People,” I decided to go for the real thing – “Sly and the Family Stone’s Greatest Hits.”

Two things struck me – pretty much instantly. The first was that I could think of no better way to celebrate our country’s birthday (and diversity) than to enjoy a band like Sly and the Family Stone – a band comprised of black and white, male and female, whose music blended rock, funk, and soul into a sing-a-long hit machine like no band before or since.

The second thing that struck me was that the band’s Greatest Hits is the mother of all greatest hits albums. First of all, it’s a true collection of the band’s greatest hits, released long before some label wiseass figured out that if you put a new non-hit song on a greatest hits album, maybe that would become a hit too, and help to boost album sales. If it didn’t produce a hit, at the very least, completist fans would be sucked in and feel obligated to buy the disc. No - “Sly and the Family Stone’s Greatest Hits” is all hits, all the time. It smokes from the first notes of I Want To Take You Higher through the fadeout of Thank You (Falettin Me Be Mice Elf Agin). The messages are positive (Stand, Everyday People, Dance To The Music, Hot Fun In The Summertime, You Can Make It If You Try) and the grooves are irresistible (the aforementioned Thank You, M’Lady). The sequencing and pacing are perfect - the songs are culled from multiple albums, but you’d never know it. They fit together like they all came from the same sessions.

Before the advent of the CD and the boxed sets, “Essential” collections, and endless repackaging and reissuing that ensued, there were many great greatest hits albums (Eagles’, Elton John’s, Patsy Cline’s, Bob Dylan’s (first and second), Creedence’s “Chronicles”, Rod Stewart’s “Sing It Again Rod,” – the list goes on and on), but to my ears, none are as great as Sly’s. If you have a copy, pull it out now; if not, run out (or online) and get it – and dance to the music, all night long, everyday people, sing a simple song. (MK)