Craig Finn : Clear Heart Full Eyes
No one is able to share spot-on observations about indie/punk/rock show culture and speak-sing about it, in as interesting a way as Craig Finn.
The voice of Lifter Puller, The Hold Steady, and most recently, Craig Finn and Some Guns – the 41 year-old Brooklyn-ite, by way of the the Twin Cities and Beantown, is by far one of the most entertaining, interesting and smartest songwriters of the last 10 years. A former punk club-poet/bar-band bard from Minnesota, Craig Finn moved to New York, formed The Hold Steady, and spun a musical career waxing philosophical about life, death, drugs, girls, God and personal survival – flawlessly enunciating every word over timeless classic rock-inspired bar band riffs, rhythms, and melodies.
Craig Finn’s lyrics and sound are ideally crafted for long, lazy, summer road-trips, hopping in and out of no-name corner bars and sun-drenched music-festivals, gunning down late-night vices and secret lovers. Sounding less like a washed-out, lo-fi, indie-popster drifting towards the beach, Finn is Kerouac’s Sal Paradise embodied – watching the American landscape zoom, and blur past, in a drunken montage of brilliant color.
On Clear Heart Full Eyes – the solo album recorded during a five-month break from The Hold Steady, Craig Finn delivers THE definitive Winter record. A collection of distinctively American tales of woe, broken promises, shattered dreams and heartache, accompanied by eerie, twangy, lap-steel guitar and alt. country swirls, that come together to conjure a barren, winter sky…but stay Positive! Finn sure is. In fact, Finn can’t help himself from staying positive. Even when it sounds like his heart has been broken, he’s lost a friend or his faith, Finn’s clever wordplay gleams light into these gloomy tales, which, in the end shine with possibility – as does the album.
– Casey Bowers
Album – Craig Finn : Clear Heart Full Eyes
Label – Full Time Hobby
Release date: January 24, 2012
Rating – 4.5 out of 5 stars
