Craig Finn's Poetry Finds Its Perfect Sonic Accompaniment

Don't get me wrong, I love The Hold Steady, Craig Finn's day job band. Their past few albums have been the soundtracks for my past few summers. They play music for good times, and music that celebrates good times long past. Their sound is big, anthemic, arena-ready guitar rock tailored for hand claps and sing-alongs.

Because their sound is so big and so loud, The Hold Steady as a band often overshadows Finn's talents as a literate (and literary) storyteller. Finn's simple, seemingly lunkheaded choruses ("Gonna walk around and drink some more", "We're gonna build somethin' this summer", "The Sweet Part of the City, the part with the bars and restaurants") belie his well-known talent for spinning tales of common folk, the boys and girls of America, people like you and me.

On his new solo release, Clear Heart Full Eyes, Finn has freed himself of The Hold Steady's soaring bombast and embraced the more subdued, rootsier sounds of Americana, folk, and even country music. It is clear from the mellow tone of the music in this collection of songs that Finn's lyrics are intended as the primary focus. As someone who generally pays relatively little attention to lyrics when listening to music, I always make an exception for Finn. He has a knack for capturing vivid moments in time, using specific imagery (double whiskey, coke, no ice, anyone?).

Finn provides some of his strongest work in that regard on Clear Heart Full Eyes. On the country tune "New Friend Jesus", he laments that "People say we suck at sports but they don't understand, it's hard to catch with holes right through your hands" (rest assured, bilblical references are in abundance here). On perhaps the album's best track, "Rented Room", Finn recounts a bad breakup, "I bathe in the dark, it feels like the womb, I know I should be getting over you" (loss, remorse, and hard luck are also in abundance here).

A valid argument could be made that Craig Finn is just treading the same old poetic ground on Clear Heart Full Eyes as he has on past Hold Steady albums. True, there are the requisite shout outs to his influences, as Finn references both Freddie Mercury and Johnny Rotten as personal advisors on "No Future". I admit that routinely name-dropping his heroes in his lyrics has gotten a bit predictable and tiresome (with the exception of raising a toast to Joe Strummer, of course). But Finn does what he does so damn well, and his brilliance for conveying life's triumphs and tragedies with such simple poignancy is a quality that will never grow tiresome.