Welcome students old and new… every Thursday until the sun blazes the Earth, the staff shall pay homage to the most classic indie albums of all time. No countdowns, or top 100 lists, just a weekly gaze into the Music Emissions vault. Let the education begin…

Separation Sunday is the second of The Hold Steady’s studio albums, coming into our hands in Springtime 2005. And what a record it was – full of dense lyrics, riffy guitar harmony and a storyline involving actual characters. It’s well and truly a concept album, but we all had let that go just because it was so weird. Traditional song structures are eschewed, there are few chorsus and even fewer refrains, but the musicianship is second to none.

It’s the kind of thing that would even sound great behind any in-my-mums-basement hack, but the crashing, heaving mass of music is propelled to epic proportions by Craig Finn’s unique gift of being able to seat the listener right in the centre of what he sees. It’s an unholy amalgamation of biblical allusion and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Which is a good thing.