Pat Benatar said it best, probably: we are young, and heartache to heartache we stand. That is, unless we're dancing, or falling down.

You may have a job, a Boy Scout troop to lead, or a very time-consuming stamp collection. But I guarantee as much as you may enjoy working, canoeing, or philately, you don't spend most of your time thinking about where to acquire more vintage postage. You think about the fun you'll have after you put those stamps away. It may sound like a beer commercial, but life really is supposed to be about the good times. And there's just no good time like a party.

But after the party, it's the after-party: the drip of the coffeepot, the things you said you wish you could take back, the hangovers like a rattling can of spray-paint in your brain. You go back to your desk or your Scouts and think fondly of the night before and wait impatiently for the night ahead.

But what does that make all the time in between? Is real life merely the hangover?

Craig Finn of The Hold Steady must like to party. It's sort of all he talks about; well, the party, and how hard it is to cope when there's no party at all. Finn, late of the much-missed keyboard-punkers Lifter Puller, loves to write about the good times, even when the good times seem to be killing him, or when there's just no good time to be had. And in Separation Sunday, his second record with his new band, Finn's written an opera of sorts, an endlessly-repeating song cycle about still being crazy after all these years.

As a lyricist, Finn's at once unforgivably snarky and yet oddly sympathetic. My personal favorite line of his comes from a song on the band's first album, The Hold Steady Almost Killed Me: "she said 'it's good to see you're back in a bar band, baby,' I said 'it's great to see you're still in the bars.' " Finn sings about his party friends, the ones he doesn't know to trust: he maintains that he "ain't never been with your little hoodrat friend," although he eventually concedes that "if you say we partied, then I guess we partied." Over churning, blood-simple blues rock, Finn goes on about sipping gin on a visit to the emergency room, girls who wear strings on their finger to help them remember the night before, a hundred kids drinking under a railroad bridge.

And yes, Finn sings about the days between the nights, too, all that romantic Technicolor stuff like falling out of love, or driving a long way in a car: The things you do when the bars are closed. He's just got a real hold on what life can be like from minute to minute in these strange times, or at least, the lives of a lot of people I know. And I'm guessing when he sings "we gather our gospels from gossip and bar talk, then declare them the truth," you'll know what he means, because you've been there, too.

"Do you want me to tell it like it's boy meets girl and the rest is history? Or do you want it like a murder mystery?" Finn inquires on "Charlemagne in Sweatpants," then decides: "I'm gonna tell it like a comeback story." And that is what you'll get out of The Hold Steady: a trope on the unsteady nature of existence, maybe, but for sure a rippin' good retelling of the night before.