“We used to post up for days at this place in the flats / and she’d stare off into space and draw smokestacks on her placemat / She had a dwindling grace and a faith in the industry / that never really made sense to me.”
This is the spoken word verse that immediately follows the melodic chorus “Sunrise, I feel like I’m riding a train I’m not on” on ‘Messing With The Settings‘ and immediately, within seconds of The Hold Steady frontman’s fifth solo album, I am filled with intrigue. This is what Craig Finn does best. And nobody, NOBODY does it better. Plus, given the fact that ‘God In Chicago‘ was of a similar ilk, it was perhaps a bit of a risk to put out another ‘talkie’, let alone have the bravado to put it on the album as the opening track! But Finn pulls it off, and how.
Often the characters in Finn’s songs lead seedy, shady lives, though unlike the Tarantino-like – maybe even John Waters-like – scenarios we witness in his brilliant band’s records, his solo output possesses considerably more romance, so you feel a kind of yearning in your heart when he sings lines like “It’s nice to know there’s someone in this world who’s always known me” and a warm glow from the beauty of the musicianship of ‘The Year We Fell Behind“.
‘Due To Depart‘ on the other hand, seems to take its lead from the classic 70s country acts like Glen Campbell and there’s maybe even a hint of The Eagles in there too. Then ‘Never Any Horses‘ and ‘Jessamine‘ continue the musical theme of A Legacy Of Rentals, which seems to reflect long, hot summers and halcyon days, with the latter track once again suggesting that Campbell has been prominent on the Finn household turntable of late.
‘A Break From The Barrage‘ then reverts to the spoken word on the verses, but oh my, WHAT a pay-off in the beautiful chorus, which gives me a similar feeling to some of the tracks on Prefab Sprout‘s From Langley Park To Memphis album, most notably ‘Cars And Girls‘. Granted, Craig’s song is considerably more restrained but that same romanticism oozes from its very pores.
The record finishes with the Donald Fagen-like ‘This Is What It Looks Like‘ in which it appears that some kind of crime is being carried out: “She said ‘do you think that we’re in danger, if we push it any further?‘” but then later “This is what it feels like when we’re joyful” which reminds me of Walter White in Breaking Bad originally doing what he needed to do out of necessity to feed his family, but eventually getting sucked further and further into a criminal world that he eventually admitted he continued doing just because he enjoyed it.
Whether or not I’m even close with that analogy, I don’t know, but it’s irrelevant anyway. All that matters is that Craig Finn has once again delivered a truly great album.
