The Hold Steady’s fourth studio album, 2008’s Stay Positive, is a victorious culmination of the group’s previous three efforts. Clean and professional, the record features guest appearances from musicians such as J Mascis (of Dinosaur Jr. fame) and Ben Nichols of Lucero. The album is a triumph. Craig Finn’s beloved storytelling about struggling have-nots and disenfranchised youth is all over Stay Positive. But the scene Finn chronicled in early Hold Steady tunes is no longer fictional; by now, the band and its fans are the scene. The explosion of message boards and early-day social media produced websites obsessed with the lore of The Hold Steady’s songwriting, and the power of its stage shows. And while touring behind 2006’s Boys and Girls in America—a perfect album for live shows—the band perfected performance as collaboration, with each show becoming a sort of performance-art partnership between The Hold Steady and the audience. By the time Stay Positive arrived, The Hold Steady had a gospel unto itself. Weaved throughout with a philosophy of resilience and survival,Stay Positive is an album about second chances and the passage of time. And it’s filled with callbacks to songs and moments on other Hold Steady records, with their usual arcs of addiction, redemption, resurrection, and falls from grace. Stay Positive turns the band members into something like preachers at the church of rock ’n’ roll—with you, the listener, singing along in the choir.