Rock 'n' roll has always been lousy with dudes who dance like women, but Craig Finn — the high-school-math-teacher-lookin' frontman of The Hold Steady, as if you didn’t know by now — is possibly the only guy in the game who dances like a five-year-old girl: Elbows in. Forearms out. Knees high. Eyes squinted shut. Beatific grin. Jazz hands all over the place.

Most of us are only capable of executing moves like that on, like, the inside. But Finn's guilelessness has everything to do with how Finn and his band manage to pull off a gig with as many transcendent moments as their sweaty, celebratory 110-minute headlining set at the 9:30 Club last night. In a word, they’re unembarrassable, as great musicians — great artists — must be. The fact that Finn’s chronicles of drugged-out losers (most of them seemingly at least a decade younger than his 36-year-old self) and drugged out not-yet-losers are more sharply-observed than most, blending Springsteen’s economy of narrative to Courtney Love’s instinctual knowledge of The Pill Book, sure helps, but even allowing for Finn’s Lou Reed/early Elvis Costello speak-singing, the band plays so hard and loud that Finn’s lyrics are largely unintelligible in performance. (Same thing, sadly, with the horn section, which Finn identified early on both as the Asbury Horns and the Philly Elite: Their contributions were lost in the din.)

Still, a win is a win no matter how it comes. It’s possible to be around people having fun and not have fun yourself, but just try it if those people are performing music. Even if Finn hadn’t called a huddle in the middle of an extended “Southtown Girls” to declare, “There is so much joy in what we do up here!” (which is apparently S.O.P. for wrapping up Hold Steady gigs) it would have been obvious from the way guitarist Tad Kubler shamelessly pulled out a double-necked guitar for “Lord, I’m Discouraged,” the first lighters-not-cell-phones-aloft concert moment I’ve witnessed in years. Or from the impeccably-mustachioed Franz Nicolay’s gleefully inept harmonica solo in “Southtown Girls.” Or from the way no lyric concerning a number between one and ten was sung without a concomitant show of fingers all night.

None of it was revolutionary, but it was a forceful, even inspiring, demonstration of an important lesson: You can't enjoy yourself if you’re worried about whether you look cool or not. The song playing on the P.A. just before the band went on was Nick Lowe’s “And So It Goes”; after they left, it was Rod Stewart’s “Every Picture Tells a Story”. What was I saying about this band being great and unembarrassable?

The gig was the Hold Steady’s first D.C. appearance since the release of Stay Positive, their fourth album, which the band performed almost in its entirety. It’s been out only for a little more than a month (two on iTunes), which didn’t prevent the front third of the house from shouting even the most distended of Finn’s stanzas right back at him. You’d have sworn the delirious crush of the opening “Constructive Summer” (“our song’s a sing-a-long-song”) represented the band in full flight -- but then what would you call the incendiary take of “The Swish” that came half an hour later?

The gig was also notable for the appearance of that rarest and most beautiful of beasts, the Truly Spontaneous Encore (Or So It Seemed). "Killer Parties" had fairly brought the house down. Tears were wept, hugs exchanged, the stage clear for a full five minutes, P.A. music on, house lights starting to flicker up. But the crowd refused to leave, and a “Hold Steady” chant picked up volume and tempo until the band relented and reappeared. Perhaps the cult’s established members knew something us new inductees didn’t — apparently other shows this tour have also featured the appropriately named coda, “How a Resurrection Really Feels.” Then again, Finn did say, “I thought we were done” once the band had been summoned back. He didn’t dance like a girl, but he did clutch the mic stand like his life depended on it. Probably because it does.