Having listened to this album a few times, I've come to the conclusion that The Hold Steady front man Craig Finn has some problems with gloom and depression. "Almost Killed Me", the debut album from the new band which has arisen from the ruins of Minneapolis band Lifter Puller, at points almost chokes on its pessimism and despondency.

Like all good rock revivalists these days, the sound of The Hold Steady is based firmly in dirty, grimy garage-band noise. Where this band diverges from the rest of the pack is that despite the grubby sound of their music, their songs contain some genuinely intelligent lyrics, clever poetry, and subtle nuances. So far, so good.

However, the first time you listen to this album, you're not going to notice any of this nuance. You're going to be trying to recover from the pummelling riff that opens up the main section of Positive Jam. The album is full of all manner of punishing riffs, but they use their best and loudest one first, and it works perfectly. The Swish, which follows it, continues the sonic assault, blasting out the riffs in some of the best rock music I've heard from this so-called "rock revival".

Subsequent listens to this music, however, reveal that the band is good for more than blasting out riffs. Topics including drugs and death are covered, the dark subject matter sitting perfectly beside the bone-jarring guitar work. On Hostile Mass, Finn takes aim at indie rock scenesters, delivering a vocal stab at a group of people that I'm sure that we all hate intensely.

The praise that I can heap upon this band is not unlimited though. There are small flaws. The first is that musically speaking, the band blows through all their good riffs and melodies in the first half of the album. By the time the second half rolls around, things are sounding just a little bit generic, and not very memorable. Finn's vocals in some spots also leave something to be desired, while spitting out words occasionally does wonders for a song, keeping it up for whole verses removes its impact and makes it sound a little boring.

All in all though, I really liked this album. It's not totally unflawed, but the nature of those flaws, and the general excellence of the rest of the music makes it easy to look past them. Not an album of the year, but one that I'm still going to pull out in the future and listen to again.