The Hold Steady, "Cattle and the Creeping Things"
A biblical odyssey from the masters of Catholic rock
Century Songs is a deep dive into the songs that have meant the most to me in the 21st Century so far, 2000-present. The songs are not ranked, and I’ll be writing about whichever ones seem right that week. For an overview of the project, click here.
There’s a scene in the enjoyably dumb 2006 Ron Howard film The Da Vinci Code, based on the dumbly enjoyable 2003 book of the same name, where Detective Audrey Tautou asks Professor Tom Hanks about his religious tendencies:
“Are you a god-fearing man, professor?”
“Well, I was raised Catholic.”
“That’s not really an answer.”
When I first saw the movie the exchange struck me, not because it’s particularly good, but because there’s a relatable kernel of truth in it for myself. I was also raised Catholic, even going to a Catholic school until the 6th grade, and while I don’t give much thought to God, Heaven, or Hell these days, I think some part of me will always identify the way Hanks’ character does. To be Catholic—particularly a lapsed one—is to always be nagged by routine, by guilt, by wondering if it’s actually okay to eat meat on Fridays during Lent even though you’re not entirely sure when Lent is anymore. I still know the stories, the parables, the lessons; I don’t strictly believe in them, but I think part of me is still afraid of them.
A lot of kids who grew up like me went through a Christian rock phase at some point, and there are a ton of Christian rock albums out there in any sub-genre you prefer. (Don’t get me started on the 90s Christian ska boom.) But there aren’t a lot of Catholic rock albums; in fact, the only one I can really think of is The Hold Steady’s 2005 record Separation Sunday, a sort-of-concept album-cum-biblical allegory that tells a loose story about a runaway named Holly who kicks around the same towns that frequently appear in the band’s lyrics with a skinhead named Gideon (like the Bible, of course) and a pimp named Charlemagne. And if all this seems like it’s layered on a bit thick, wait til you get a load of the crash course on the books of the Bible in “Cattle and the Creeping Things,” and how easily the plagues of Egypt translate to addicts and prostitutes in the Midwest.
Craig Finn, frontman of The Hold Steady, was also raised Catholic. Growing up in Edina, Minnesota, outside Minneapolis, church was more of an obligation instead of something that should be sought out. And like all young punks in the Midwest he eventually found The Replacements, especially 1983’s Hootenanny, a messy, raucous album full of feedback, tossed-off lyrics, and frequent flashes of brilliance—or, as Finn put it, “a religious experience.” Finn quit Catholicism when he was 18 and attended Boston College, before relocating to MN, forming his first band, Lifter Puller, and picking up the baton from those early Mats records.
I came to Lifter Puller later, after I had been listening to The Hold Steady for a while, and at first I didn’t pay it much attention because it sounded too much like a rehearsal for Finn’s current band. And it does share a lot of the same musical DNA, from founding members Finn and bassist Tad Kubler to an encyclopedic knowledge of streets and neighborhoods, people and bars, and the kinds of stories that get told and retold (and re-retold) at parties for the same people who have already heard them a hundred times. But now I appreciate the roughness of those early years, and by their final album, 2000’s Fiestas & Fiascos, they were bringing in the horns and soaring guitars that would transition them to the Springsteen-by-way-of-Hüsker Dü of The Hold Steady.
The first thing you notice about Finn’s lyrics is the sheer depth of his built-in mythology. Characters like Charlemagne and Gideon show up again and again, doing hard drugs and running with and away from the skinheads and the pimps that run the streets in his songs. (In fact, there are so many self-references and recurring names that there’s an entire Hold Steady wiki for them.) You also notice, of course, his voice and delivery, which are dry and hoarse, like a revivalist preacher at the end of his shift when all he wants to talk about are heavy metal records and bum cigarettes from anyone who hasn’t left yet. Finn’s impassioned vocals are what sells the stories; he sounds older than his years, having seen and done it all and eager to share these parables with whoever is listening.
And when he’s not singing about people and the things they may or may not have done, he’s singing about the way music can make you feel, the religious experience of listening to and playing music with people with whom you have a shared history rooted in time and place. On their first album as a new entity, Almost Killed Me, Finn talk-sings:
“Warm beer to the summer smoke
And the Meat Loaf to the Billy Joel
Certain songs, they get so scratched into our soul”
In a sense, that’s the very real feeling this Substack is attempting to articulate: that music can be as spiritually fulfilling as anything else we can throw at it. Finn has said that punk rock was his religion early on, and whenever he’s singing about his musical heroes he does so with the same reverence as the Catholic saints. “Here’s a toast to St. Joe Strummer, I think he might’ve been our only decent teacher.”
Finn never truly shook off his Catholicism, and when it was time to record their second album, the characters he had been writing about for years became fully realized people with complex inner lives and their own unique quests for salvation. Separation Sunday is filled with Biblical allusions, rock and roll mythology, wordplay, and, of course, references to other Hold Steady songs. (To wit: on the opening song, “Hornets! Hornets!” Holly mouths the words to “Running Up That Hill,” a song which Finn describes as having been “scratched into her soul.”) But before Holly, Charlemagne, and Gideon can find their way to a Resurrection, they need to start at the beginning.
“They got to the part with the cattle and the creeping things
Said ‘I’m pretty sure we’ve heard this one before
And don’t it all end up in some revelation
With four guys on horses and violent red visions
Famine and Death and Pestilence and War?
I’m pretty sure I heard this one before’”
“Cattle and the Creeping Things” toggles between the books of the Bible and the proper introduction of our characters. Charlemagne finds Holly (short for Hallelujah, naturally) at some place that I always took to be an AA meeting, drinking coffee with too much sugar and hanging out with “some good-looking drifter.”
“I heard Gideon saw you in Denver, he said you’re contagious
Silly rabbit, tripping is for teenagers
Murder is for murderers and hard drugs are for bartenders
I think I might have mentioned that before”*
*He did, once again, on “Certain Songs,” which I am beginning to think might be The Hold Steady’s decoder ring.
Then there’s Gideon, who of course rips pages out of the Bibles with his name on it that’s found in motel bed stands everywhere in America. Gideon speaks a mangled biblical language, pulling passages from The Gospels (“He likes the part where the traders get chased out from the temple”) and Exodus, which he describes as “a movement of the people.” I always thought of Gideon as a drug dealer-philosopher, with a surprising depth that can be understandably irresistible to someone like Holly, who is always looking for a savior. (At the end of the album, Holly realizes she is her own savior after all, once she undergoes a resurrection of sorts herself.)
My favorite lyric in the song though, the one that just kills me and that sums up everything about my relationship with the Bible and Catholicism more than anything else, is this rumination on the Book of Genesis:
“I guess I heard about original sin
I heard the dudes blamed the chick
I heard the chick blamed the snake
And I heard they were naked when they got busted
And I heard things ain’t been the same since”
Without knowing Finn’s background and his keen interest in exploring the role faith and Catholicism has in his own life, this might come across as merely flippant. But Finn has been considering his relationship with the church for most of his life; as he said back in 2009, his interest is in “embracing the Catholic church as my own culture, and my own ancestors and my own background, their way of explaining morality and explaining some of the wonder of the world that’s beyond our grasp.” And often the way he does that is through his lyrics and his characters whose journeys mirror the complicated and often contradictory turns they take.
One of Holly’s recurring characteristics is having visions, specifically of St. Teresa of Ávila, known for experiencing bouts of “religious ecstasy.” Her legacy is complicated, but she is mostly known for her contemplations on mysticism and its role in Christianity, using prayer as a means of ascending her soul to God. It’s heady stuff, so much so that Separation Sunday isn’t even the first time St. Teresa was invoked in a punk song; Thurston Moore drew inspiration from her in “Theresa’s Sound-World” from 1992’s Dirty.
Holly’s visions may not be of divine providence, but she finds the transcendent in her life the only way she knows how.
“She said ‘I was seeing double for three straight days
After I got born again
It felt strange, but it was nice and peaceful
And it really pleased me to be around so many people
Of course, half of them were visions
Half of them were friends from going through the program with me
Later on, we did some sexy things
Took a couple photographs and carved them into wood reliefs.’”
By the end of the song, Holly, out of rehab and experiencing something like a religious ecstasy of her own, has reconnected with Gideon, whose own exodus has led him to another new city. Together they go looking for “a simple place to score”; once again, the search for transcendence leading them to familiar rituals and an altering of consciousness. Their journey toward salvation continues, as it does for all of us, no matter what form it takes. In the end, only you will know how a resurrection really feels.
Next Week: I’ll be moving to twice a week! On Tuesday you’ll get a shorter write-up about a song that I think is worth spotlighting but might not otherwise get a full essay. Regular essays will run on Fridays, like next week’s important public service announcement.