Heaven is never record store day

I was fooled again this year. I woke up early and headed on over to Reckless to possibly pick up a copy of the Hold Steady's new album, six hundred copies of which were released three weeks early for Record Store Day. There was, of course, a line waiting to get into the store, and I gave up in favor of breakfast. Now, the record is on ebay for aroudn $130, making me wonder who record store day does anything but galvanize the hard-core collectors (and canny opportunists).

At least the record has now leaked, and I've been listening to a shitty vinyl rip on my iPod. I'm waiting for a higher quality leak to make any real judgement, but that asshole over at Sometimes a Great Blog ain't. Here's a text I recieved today at work:

My thougts on h is w: dissapointing but not terrible. Some songs I do like a
lot, some plain bad songs (ring ring goes the telephone?) and the biggest
problem [begin second text] is that it is sort of bland from start to end

I like it more than that, but want to spend some more time with it before writing about it here. Although, I think most of the reviews will agree with SAGB and decry The Hold Steady's continued wimpiness.