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.)