"The pool party is still on," read the website for the McCarren Park Pool Parties on Sunday morning, when severe thunderstorm warnings were levied across the entire tri-state area. "The Hold Steady are not pussies, they can handle this!"

Apparently, the band's fans are not pussies, either. A full crowd showed up and remained through a set by the opening band, The Loved Ones, even as a gentle drizzle turned into a pounding downpour. People hid under swag towels, broke out their umbrellas, stripped down to their bathing suits, but didn't go home. If anything, the weather energized the crowd and the band. "I think it helped us," one of The Loved Ones remarked from the stage.

By the time The Hold Steady were ready to begin, besides people wringing out their dripping clothes, all evidence of threatening weather was gone. The crowd looked like they could have been characters in one of the Hold Steady's songs: sexy, but messy. It certainly resonated with the soggy crowd when, towards the end of the set, singer Craig Finn broke into "Hearts and Arms," and reached the lyric, "she ascended into heaven soaking wet."

Besides "Hearts and Arms," the band played a healthy mix from its album Boys and Girls in America and its released-only-on-iTunes follow-up, Stay Positive. If the rain had excited the crowd, the band seemed intent on exhausting it, playing its most frantic songs—"Stay Positive," "Stuck Between Stations," "The Swish," and "Your Little Hoodrat Friend"—all right in a row. After a slightly more down-tempo end-of-set and encore, the crowed finally dispersed, damp and disheveled, but smiling.