"Back when we were living up on Hennepin." So begins the new Hold Steady record, "Heaven Is Whenever," which came out yesterday on Vagrant Records and (I'm predicting) should crack the Billboard top 20. Wherever the album opens on the charts, its opening line indicates frontman Craig Finn's return to his Twin Cities youth for lyrical inspiration.

The band's last album ("Stay Positive") only included one local reference, a passing nod to St. Paul in "Your Sapphire." This one namechecks several Twin Cities cites just in the first song, "The Sweet Part of the City," including the great line, "It's a long way from Cedar-Riverside to Cedars-Sinai." There's also a shout-out to 7th Street Entry in "Barely Breathing." The most localized song, though, is "We Can Get Together," Finn's most overt nod to the Minnesota bands that influenced him: "There's a girl on heaven hill / I come up to her cabin still / She said Hüsker Dü got huge / But they started in St. Paul / Do you remember 'Makes No Sense at All?' " As in a lot of Craig's writing, we'll chalk up the use of the word "huge" to creative license.

So, beyond all that, how is the record? Pretty damn powerful, but quite different. The musical difference can also be gleaned right away in its opening moments, as Tad Kubler kicks things off with a bluesy acoustic slide-guitar riff. That's right: acoustic guitar, which Finn follows with a melodic vocal part that's far from his trademark, atonal stammering. "Sweet Part of the City" is just one of several songs that sound like straight-up classic-rock. In fact, with this album the Hold Steady could be the ones opening for Tom Petty this summer instead of their pals the Drive-by Truckers. Other anthemic fist-pumping rockers include the Ratt-riffy "Rock Problems" and what might be the best track, "The Weekenders," featuring another scorching Kubler solo la "Lord, I'm Discouraged." There are also a lot of "ooh" and "ahh" backup vocals scattered throughout, including in "We Can Get Together," which comes close to being a power ballad. As the predictably lukewarm Pitchfork review indicates, some fans are bound to be turned off by this classicism. Anybody who went back and bought the early Aerosmith and Zeppelin records on CD after years of ignoring them for punkier stuff, though, should know exactly where the band is coming from.

Also out this week: Minnesota's other locally reared East Coast band, Free Energy, finally saw its DFA debut "Stuck on Nothing" hit stores yesterday following a digital-only release. You already know how that record is if you've heard any of the three same-cloth singles heavily rotated on the Current -- a lot of fun, if a bit repetitive.