W.S. Walcott Medicine Show

07. Always Been – Craig Finn (Thirty Tigers)

I realize that what I’m about to say might be blasphemous to some but I’m at the point that I appreciate and enjoy Craig Finn’s solo efforts even more than his recent work with The Hold Steady.  That’s not a knock on albums like The Price of Progress, ODP orThrashing Through The Passion but rather a testament to his ability to tell his incredible stories more clearly and coherently in the softer, more toned down sound of his solo recordings.  Always Been encapsulates this magic just perfectly with what just might be his best solo effort to date.  The album opens up with “Bethany”, a tragic tale of a former reverend who has fallen on hard times as he laments a lost love as he alternates living between his parent’s shore house and his sister’s outside of Philadelphia.  Finn uses this protagonist (whose name Clayton, we will learn later on the disc) as the primary character throughout the album.  As we move along with the album, one can’t help but notice a conflict within Clayton of whether to move on or to try to settle in.  This dichotomy comes across in a song like “Crumbs” with its line, “We’ll never win this war, but maybe we can wait it out.”  We get some clarity as to the background of how Clayton got to this bottom of the barrel spot in his life in the song titled “Clayton”.  A true dark and sad story of one’s slow descent.  But then there is the song titled “Postcards”, a more upbeat song in both tenor as well as meaning.  The slow burning rocker builds momentum as the ex-reverend realizes that he can always live vicariously in the places he’ll never get to via the postcards he gets in the mail. Its on this song that the backup musicians on the album truly shine.  Always Been was produced by Adam Granduciel and his band War On Drugs provide the backing throughout the album.  Anyway, in true War On Drugs fashion the slow cascading of the music provides an ideal soundscape for the journey which Finn takes us on as he reports the trials and tribulations of Clayton.  Oddly enough the last track of the collection, “Shamrock” has nothing to do with Clayton and personally, I think it’s the most eloquent and poignant song of the album.  “Shamrock” is a soft spoken acoustic number with just Finn on finger picked guitar and the classic spoken word kind of singing which he’s become infamous for.  It’s a tune which, if written and performed by Springsteen, would have fit perfectly on the Nebraska album.  It’s a dark and dirty vignette about another down on his luck ne’er do good loveable loser who unfortunately doesn’t bounce off the bottom of the well like Clayton appears to do at the conclusion of “Postcards”. Always Been proves to be a wonderful representation of loss and redemption and loss again.  And with the help of Granduciel and War On Drugs, Finn nails it with this one.