A FEW years ago, Elvis Costello declared an ongoing fondness for U2. By way of explanation, Costello outlined his admiration for U2’s ability to forge intimacy and emotional connection even in the Enormo-Domes and Mega-Bowls that constitute their tour schedules. At stadium level now, Costello observed, “everything else is bullshit, or a trip to the circus.” It was an astute summary of the reasons why few sane folk approach a stadium show with optimism. But if one artist might be expected to understand how to except oneself from Costello’s dictum, it's Bruce Springsteen, who's been playing stadiums for more than 25 years. These hopes could only be inflated by the dash that the E Street band were cutting on the earlier stages of the “Magic” tour, as they played in mere arenas. Last November, I covered the less glamorous stretch of the American tour for Uncut -– St Paul, Cleveland, Auburn Hills -– and saw, I’m certain, three of the best shows that I ever will. At London’s 02 Arena in December, they’d been no less fantastic, topping the show with an exuberant “Santa Claus Is Coming To Town”. Tonight, though -- the first of two shows at the 60,000 capacity Arsenal ground, the first time it's been used as a live music venue since it opened in 2006 -- represents a somewhat baffling failure on Springsteen’s part to confront the drawbacks or the possibilities of the stadium environment. He's playing exactly the same show as he was in the arenas -– the only alterations to the set are bigger stage-side screens -– and much is lost in the translation. In an enclosed venue, where the light can be controlled, the conceit of having the band dressed in black worked a treat, conferring upon them a last-gang-in-town raffishness that well complemented the fabulous thrashing they were giving Springsteen’s incomparable catalogue. Tonight, when they take the stage in broad daylight at around 7:30, they’re just invisible. They’re also barely audible. It's not helped that there's been much to-ing and fro-ing at Islington council, many locals voicing their concern about the potential noise levels, so conditions on these shows taking place included an independent consultant monitoring sound levels, a stipulation that the noise doesn't exceed 75 decibels outside the ground, and a complaints hotline for residents. As a result, it's perfectly possible to conduct a conversation during the set without raising your voice -- even at the furious peaks of “The Ties That Bind” and “Cadillac Ranch”. At the arena shows, the unfurling of Steve Van Zandt’s riff at the start of the souped-up “Reason To Believe” that's been such a highlight of this tour felt something like being in an aeroplane at takeoff, pushed backwards into your seat by an overwhelming kinetic energy. Tonight, even that resembles a dim echo of a party 10 blocks away. The subtler moments, mostly drawn from the new album –- “Magic” and “Devil’s Arcade” especially –- are utterly lost. And it’s little help that a long stretch of the set is selected from somewhere beneath Springsteen’s top drawer. It’s difficult to fathom the logic by which “Prove It All Night”, “Working On The Highway” and “Waitin’ On A Sunny Day” get a run while the likes of “Racing In The Street”, "The River”, and “Girls In Their Summer Clothes” are warming the bench. Matters do improve as the sun disappears, allowing the lights to confer some drama upon “Long Walk Home” and an especially spirited “Badlands”. And only the most adamantine not-in-my-back-yard Islingtonian could fail to be swept along by the encore -– “Thunder Road”, "Born To Run”, “Glory Days”, “Rosalita”, “Dancing In The Dark”, “American Land”. Ultimately, though, Springsteen and the E Street Band showed up at the wrong address tonight. In a theatre, you can imagine, this show would have been a plausible candidate for best thing ever. In an arena, this show would have been –- as last winter’s arena shows were –- astonishing. In a stadium, it was uninvolving and impersonal. Just sort of there. The last things anyone should be able to accuse Springsteen, of all people, of being. Set list: Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out Radio Nowhere The Ties That Bind Lonesome Day The Promised Land Magic Atlantic City Reason To Believe Candy's Room Prove It All Night Because The Night Working On The Highway Cadillac Ranch Livin' In The Future Mary's Place Waitin' On A Sunny Day Point Blank Devil's Arcade The Rising Last To Die Long Walk Home Badlands Thunder Road Born To Run Glory Days Rosalita Dancing In The Dark American Land ANDREW MUELLER

They look, famously, on the cover of last year’s Tonight At The Arizona album, like the wayward off-spring of The Band, with whose songs and music their own colourful excursions into the hinterlands of ‘the old, weird America’, as essayed by Bob and The Band on The Basement Tapes, are frequently compared. Tonight, they’ve left the suits, overcoats, snap-brim hats and battered fedoras in the wardrobe back at the shack you like to think they live in, somewhere out in the hills, a whiskey still and whatever it takes to brew your own crystal meth behind it. But they still manage to look like the kind of hillbilly clan you might find stalking through the pages of a country noir classic by Daniel Woodrell – Winter’s Bone, say, or The Death Of Sweet Mister. Which is to say, they look like the people who could cause mayhem and a fair amount of havoc for no better reason than the sheer hell of it, drummer and occasional singer Simone Felice looking from the off tonight like he’s especially in the mood for a certain amount wildness. He’s wild-eyed and shirtless by the gig’s climax and hanging from a monitor fitting in the ceiling by the end of the second song, a raucous take on “Ruby Mae”, a boozy waltz from the recent The Felice Brothers album, which if you haven’t heard it yet is one of the records of the year so far. Man, he looks wired. “Thank you for your hospitality,” says brother Ian, himself a scrappy looking guy who looks like he’d be hard to put down if the going got rough, before handing over to big and bearded bother James, who after a generous swig of Jack Daniel’s leads the crew into a rousing “Whiskey In My Whiskey”, also from the new album. It’s raucous, more than a little demented and provokes a hearty, full-throated response from a very lively, sold-out crowd. When they aren’t singing about drinking, the Felice Brothers’ bristling repertoire of truly outstanding original material veers variously towards songs about guns, sex, drugs, hard bleak times, heartbreak, martyrdom, loss, death, redemption, reckless women, doing time, chickens and The Lord, with whom they appear on several songs to have issues. Tonight, then, there are great, battered loser’s laments like the unbearably sad and wistfully wry “Rockerfeller Druglaw Blues”, about a drug-runner’s fateful bust (chorus: “Fifteen grams of heroin and an ounce of speed/Means fifteen years to life/Rockerfeller, Rockerfeller, that’s a long old time”), and the rowdier “Frankie’s Gun” (as featured on Uncut’s Long Time Gone CD), about the fatal falling out between a couple of hapless hoods on a drug run to Chicago, which ends the scheduled set on a thoroughly rambunctious high. There are, too, amid the general larkishness and more obvious singalong crowd-pleasers - “Radio Song”, “Save Our Saviour”, “Run Chicken Run”, among them – exquisitely poignant moments like “Mercy”, the dark, brooding and fatalistic “Hey Hey Revolver”, which contemporises the dustbowl desperation of “The Ballad Of Hollis Brown”, the truly beautiful “St Stephen’s End” and “Your Belly in My Arms”, tonight’s first encore, stunningly delivered by Simone, solo and frighteningly intense. It ends with the holy-rolling gospel shakedown of “Ain’t Gonna Think About Trouble Anymore” and “Glory Glory”, by which time, at least half the audience are on stage with the band, giving it their noisy all. Riotously good stuff. Bring ‘em back soon.

After my first thoughts on “Stay Positive”, we’re continuing to unpick a record that I’m now suspecting is The Hold Steady’s masterpiece. Allan has been even more dedicated in the pursuit of meaning than I have, assiduously studying John Cassavetes’ “Opening Night”, since Craig Finn mentioned that it had a critical influence on his lyrics, most explicitly in "Slapped Actress". I’m reminded of Le Tigre’s “What's Yr Take on Cassavetes” here (“Misogynist? Genius? Misogynist! Genius!”), not least because the treatment of women by some of Finn’s protagonists could be construed as a tad dubious (especially in “Magazines”). But anyway, Allan got hold the other day of the lyrics to the album, which I’m skimming as I type, and which only make the whole shifting narratives of “Stay Positive” even more engrossing. One thing I hadn’t picked up before, but which various other blogs like Stereogum have spotted (along with my admittedly wet use of the word “bewitching”), are the Youth Of Today and 7 Seconds namedrops in “Stay Positive” itself. Given The Hold Steady’s generally epicurean rep, they don’t strike me as the sort of band who ever really embraced the Straight Edge lifestyle. But one of the things that I find compelling about the band is that vague hunch that they came – like me, I suppose, to a degree – to embracing American rock orthodoxy only after having been vigorously schooled in ‘80s hardcore and underground rock. Which reminds me of a couple of things: one, that I really should check out Lifter Puller one of these days; and two, that Walter Schreifels (from Youth Of Today) has finally got around to making a second Rival Schools album, which I’m intrigued to hear since the first one, 2001’s “United By Fate”, was one of the last punk records to really excite me. Amongst the lyrics that Allan received, there were the words to a song called “Ask Her For Adderall” which didn’t appear on our promos of “Stay Positive”. According to Wikipedia – and I really should check with the publicist to confirm this – the song will appear as a bonus track on the vinyl version. It features the only explicit reference to Holly and Charlemagne, and a brief look at Youtube reveals a bunch of live versions, with this one probably sounding the clearest. The clip is from the 40 Watt Club, which is apt since, like “Constructive Summer”, it feels faintly reminiscent of early REM as well as, again Husker Du. Great song, too, and I’d have put it on the full album ahead of “Magazines”. But we’re nitpicking here. “Stay Positive” has leaked, apparently, so if you’re that way inclined, have a hunt around and report back, maybe?