Review Summary: Steel On Steel is a surprising evolution on Hole's standards, with diverse songwriting that remains strong throughout the entire album even with a few, very minor, points of playing too close to the chest.
The Dave Hole story is, to my knowledge, scant on personal details, which at first glance may make it seem like tracking his trajectory as an artist with an overall vision is a waste of time. He's not a David Bowie or even a Spiritualized; he doesn't have major life events that completely change his songwriting style, and in fact his general growth up to this point has met the fair expectations of many blues artists with cult followings, mostly local. But if there is any time where something happened to shake things up, it was while entering development of his fourth studio effort, Steel On Steel. Far from Sea Change, this is still Hole's most tense, most daring and most driving effort, and absolutely pays off in one of the most explosive albums of his career.
Hole's biggest problem up to this point has been his inability to reconcile his blues roots and his jam band tendencies with the expectation of songwriting fit for an album statement, but Steel On Steel comes damn close to fulfilling the promise of Short Fuse Blues. It seems weird to say, but listening to this album made me realise how few choruses he had up to this point, sticking only to singular verses and grooves. But with the slight buckling to pop and classic rock songwriting trappings, the compositions, even on the tracks that feel more mediocre in the context of the album, are measurably more dynamic and exciting. There's a lot more room in the songwriting and everything feels in its proper place instead of meandering from one setpiece to another.
This versatility comes out much stronger on the album's first half, with opener Wildfire giving us a tense acoustic passage before launching into some hard rocking goodness. In a discography full of swing beat songs, this is one of the strongest. Quicksand follows this, demonstrating perhaps Hole's best songwriting, with a great verse/chorus dynamic backed by an unstoppable driving riff and solos soulful enough to be meaningful to the song but developed enough to not feel artificial. Most songs on the record fit similar molds, such as Goin' Down with its tense, descending yet ever resolving riff, and Hook, Line and Sinker and Killing Bite, both of which play just enough with the twelve bar framework while offering fiery rhythm sections.
But his newfound versatility is perhaps best demonstrated on the longer, slower cuts. Hole writes a lot of bitter break-up songs, but Counting My Regrets features a tired, despondent vocal delivery whose power would perhaps never really be met again, and it doesn't compromise on his blues core because it still feels improvised, coming from the soul rather than from the pen. Between the ache of this song, the anxiety of Worry and the ghost story bravado of One Last Breath, I get the impression that Hole went through something to shake up his world between albums, or else simply embraced his age as a performer. Breaking out as a musician in your fourties is not something that often happens, but it can be an advantage if you know to show off your hard living and experience, and lyrically, it feels like Hole really leaned into it. Passages such as "I found love, or should I say when I stopped looking, love found me" (a possible call-back to the Beatles' Norwegian Wood) or "I'll draw one last breath and the Lord can finish what I've begun" tap into something a bit more raw and poetic. Even the clumsier moments feel like they come from a place of sincerity this time. The bullet point delivery of Worry, where Hole gives aside mentions to pollution and mortality, may seem corny, but it actually fits really well into your typical chugging blues song.
But again, the big selling point of nigh any Dave Hole album is his slide guitar work, and Steel On Steel is probably the best compromise between general listener of bias of aching to hear more variety with Hole's clear intentions to stick to his style of guitar work, meaning it still pales in comparison to the all-guns blazing delivery of Short Fuse Blues, but the points of repetition feel less like a restrictive playing style and more like motifs, active stand-bys to make Hole sound more reliable. Again, the general songwriting and pacing also gives these solos room to breathe and also shine. Previous efforts saw him stumble from one solo to the next, but almost every one here feels like a crescendo, the climax that the rest of the song was building up to. It helps that the grooves are stronger than ever too, with riffs being more playful and breaking some established rules of classical blues.
So with so much praise towards Hole's improvement as an artist across the board, why does Steel On Steel fall slightly short of brilliance? Simply, the album is just too long. Thirteen tracks and fifty five minutes is a difficult sell for even the most dynamic and seasoned performers, let alone someone simply following their dreams of being a blues artist, and a couple of songs, while still good, don't quite fill a niche that needed filling. Cold Rain and I Won't Leave are the most standard cuts, and even Take Me To Chicago, arguably the man's signature song, doesn't move quickly enough for how much time it occupies. The overall mood becomes just a tad monotonous, even as most songs still have many points of greatness. It is, like so many blues albums, for a specific mood rather than meant to be taken as a deep art statement.
Even with that said, I was consistently impressed I was engaged as much and for as long as I was. Previous albums were even more lumbering, but even the lesser cuts on Steel On Steel have some sense of identity and pulse, and the overall improvements to the songwriting and especially the lyricism and delivery cannot be denied. In that sense, it easily goes toe to toe with Short Fuse Blues, whose more fiery solos and gnarlier bar band background give it a bit more excitement but lack the development, and especially the production, of Steel On Steel. The pianos and organs sound like such this time, and are not simply retuned Hammonds and Casios, which is another small touch that just highlights the stronger songwriting. Hole still had room to grow, but in some ways, this was definitely his finest accomplishment at the time.
