By DCist contributor Graham Hough-Cornwell

In 1974 after watching a show at the Harvard Square theatre, rock critic Jon Landau famously wrote, “I saw rock and roll’s future, and its name is Bruce Springsteen." Now anyone who’s spent any time with rock history knows this as a defining point in Springsteen’s career, after which he graced the covers of Time and Newsweek (simultaneously) and would never have to play another dingy bar again in his life. Of course, anyone who’s spent any time with rock criticism knows hyperbole like this rarely works, and for every Springsteen there’s at least one Golden Earring. And anyone who’s a cynic – or worse, not a card-carrying “rockist” – probably reads desperation and/or naiveté into Landau’s words.

So, where you place yourself in the Landau/Rock 'n' Roll Future spectrum, then, might directly correlate to how much you like the Hold Steady. Last night at Ottobar in Baltimore, the fanboy and the critic in me kept coming back to those words and asking myself if it really could get any better than this. Today – gushing subsided and inner cynic’s voice restored – I’ll keep the potentially hazardous exaggerations to myself and tell you what I know to be true: the Hold Steady are one of the best bands in America.

For those keeping score at home, their set was an even mix of material from their terrific debut, Almost Killed Me, nearly half of its impressive follow-up Separation Sunday, and most of their latest, Boys and Girls in America (released today in the States). As for the new album, you get a lot of the established Hold Steady template – boiler plate rock laying the foundation for Craig Finn’s barbed tales of teenagers in suburbia. But here’s what has changed: all manner of keyboards, from “Thunder Road” style tinklings to bawdy organ swells; Finn’s new lyrical interest in the romantic struggles of his teenage heroes and heroines; the band’s discovery of the power of vocal harmony, and experiments with acoustic guitars.

And, as you might expect, they all sounded great in the Ottobar’s tiny fuzzbox of a room. Franz Nicolay – he of the Rollie Fingers moustache well before Rollie Fingers moustaches were de rigeur in indie rock circles – takes a prominent role, his keys and vocals filling out the sound, while lead guitarist Tad Kubler even took a brief respite from double-neck monster guitar riffs to gently strum an acoustic.

Perhaps best of all, last night Finn’s stories of guys and girls in hard-luck relationships seemed to give the band the hook it’s been searching for. “Southtown Girls” – with it’s a cappella intro – could be the latest indie rock song to find its way on sorority girl mixtapes, though it has other rivals in the piano power-ballad “First Night” and the terrific “You Can Make Him Like You.” With “Massive Nights”, they may well have penned the year’s most unlikely power pop gem.

And if there’s one more thing worth mentioning, it’s that the Hold Steady have discovered one of the true goldmines of pop music: the wordless chorus. Those who look back fondly on the time when Springsteen was just about to make his leap into the big time would be remiss to overlook the power of “Born to Run’s” outro. It may be nothing more than the chorus’ melody repeated without words, but that “whoa-oh-oh-oh-ohhh” is quite the musical moment, and, surely for some, shouting along to it was what got them hooked.

I saw it once written that the Hold Steady – following two consecutive appearances on the Village Voice Pazz and Jop poll – are huge with people who listen to 100 albums a year, but not so much with folks who listen to 4. I don’t know if the sing-along choruses, the elegant classic rock piano flourishes, or the boy-girl romances are enough to win over the uninitiated. And if Finn’s unique, beat poet delivery backed by the best bar band in the Midwest really isn’t your thing, that’s not likely to change. Likewise, the cynical part of me worries that as the Hold Steady dig deeper towards their roots – nearly every song is still about high school or Minneapolis or both – they’ll lose some of their older crowd and find the younger crowds too unversed in the language of classically American rock and roll. In which case, that’s fine and I’ll just keep enjoying them for 12 bucks on Monday night in a tiny club somewhere. But there’s also a little Jon Landau inside my head, and he keeps reminding me that these guys are unquestionably here to stay.

Photo from the band's video for "Chips Ahoy!" directed by Moh Azima