Steady Hands
Bio
Senator John Blutarski once said that when the going gets tough, the tough get going.
In 2020, the going got very tough. But Steady Hands’ Sean Huber got going, channeling everything into a collection of songs equally lamenting and celebrating the unpredictability, unfairness, and unbelievable beauty of life.
The pandemic album isn’t a new narrative. Just about all new art we’ve consumed since 2020 owes to the period of lockdown. But where many musicians looked inward and reflected on the pains of solitude, Huber made a point to look outward, centering his work around the world that still existed outside of his door – a world full of chaos, fear, rebellion, revolution.
Huber reflected on all of that, but he also reflected on the stillness that came from that time of his life, and he came out with what he believes is his band’s most energetic and cohesive album yet: “Cheap Fiction” – 11 songs full of all of the swagger and snot that he’s embraced over his career, but with a refined point of view of someone who’s figured out how to articulate what they want to say.
Steady Hands pays homage to all of the deities you’d expect someone with a New Jersey birth certificate and a dog named Bruce to worship, with rollicking saxophone and piano over tales of hard-on-their-luck neighborhoods, and stadium-rock-ready guitar zaps over odes to the misrepresented people of Florida who aren’t so into the state’s elected leaders and reputation. He grapples with lapsed religion like so many with Irish names have done before him. And he fits in real nicely with the modern heroes of Philadelphia’s punk scene, blending the best of heartland rock and straight-up punk with his own penchant for the tropical.