The announcement of a new solo album from Craig Finn, lead man with The Hold Steady's will no doubt excite a fair few people. Although in the face of the band’s waning popularity, it’s likely to excite fewer people than it would have done a few years ago.
Nevertheless, the song’s back-story is interesting, and worth quoting from the press release in full: “Chris Newmyer is a friend of mine whose roof I was on while watching the Towers go down on 9/11. We were drinking beers because we didn’t know what else to do. That was kind of crazy. I went up there again recently to take a photo because I knew this album was coming out. He’s on Second Avenue and Ninth Street and 48 hours after we got the photo, those two East Village apartment buildings across the street exploded and burnt down. Strange and eerie timing.”
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It actually sounds like a low-budget Bruce Springsteen riffing with Dire Straits. Finn’s narrative – half-drawled, half-shouted, but never really sung – is bathed in a wash of reverb against a solid rock drum that dominates the shape of a simple chord sequence. It’s a song that says ‘classic blue collar American rock’. It also sounds very much like 1985. And if one thing is clear in the confused world of 2015, it’s that times have changed: consequently, this sounds lethargic and hopelessly dated.
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