Review: Craig Finn – Clear Heart Full Eyes
Craig Finn – Clear Heart Full Eyes (2012) [Vagrant Records] // Grade: B+
The Hold Steady have settled into a very comfortable and surprisingly fruitful position as not only one of America’s best bar bands, but also one of its surprise crossover hits. Perhaps not in records sales, though they’re no slumps, but in range of clientele. The crowd at a Hold Steady show is a incongruous blend of indie rock heads who like the Kerouac lyricism and lament the loss of keyboardist Franz Nikolai, drifting and drunk Twin Cities natives who’ve been along for the ride since Lifter Puller, and hoodie wearing bros who like to slam beer cans to anthemic choruses.
Fitting then, how for his first solo venture, Craig Finn has openly aped the oft-repeated phrase from another hard to classify kink in America’s pop culture quilt, Friday Night Lights. It’s the southern football show that became an unlikely place of worship for pale and scrawny masses of TV nerds. Much like that show, Craig Finn also has that innate ability to tap into a lost “American-ness”, mostly focused on youth, that is hard to say no to. His streak does not end with Clear Hearts Full Eyes, and are in ways enhanced by his admittedly minimal experience with songwriting. Whereas as part of the Hold Steady Finn is handed a completed song to spin his yarns over, here he digs into his crates of folk and country records, cobbling together songs that may lack the punching choruses but bring their own charming energy.
Lyrically, the subjects are no surprise. Finn is a master of the high-lowbrow, imbuing his beersoaked stories of lost girls, ill-fated trips to southern cities, explosive youths, and biblical imagery with a glow of unforced profundity. The man tells a good tale. Even when flirting with kitsch as on “New Friend Jesus”, he still has the smarts to include some funny aside about how it’s “hard to play sports with holes in your hands.” Stripped of his sing-along songs, Finn is allowed to move forward in a way that 2009′s Heaven Is Whenever couldn’t. The melancholy is not always a triumphant one. There are musical misses here, like the saloon twinkle of “Terrified Eyes”, but for the most part Finn chooses his set dressing quite well. Whether this is just a one-time diversion or not, Finn reaffirms that, like the Dillon Panthers, he’s someone we want to root for and probably should.
- Whole Milk