Boys and Girls in America (2006)

Three minutes into the Hold Steady's third record, singer-shouter Craig Finn has cataloged all his daunting topical tropes — dead poets, Christianity, promiscuity, substance abuse, the Twin Cities — over a background of soaring heartland rock. But Boys and Girls in America isn't just noir karaoke and E Street shuffle: ''First Night,'' delicately adorned with steel guitars, achieves an NPR-ready Americana, and, on several tracks, the swirls of organ they've added to their hyperliterate stomping suggest Deep Purple with a library card.