{"id":11534,"date":"2025-08-27T14:55:19","date_gmt":"2025-08-27T14:55:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/farefwd.com\/?p=11534"},"modified":"2025-08-27T14:55:55","modified_gmt":"2025-08-27T14:55:55","slug":"always-been","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/farefwd.com\/index.php\/2025\/08\/27\/always-been\/","title":{"rendered":"Always Been"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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A Man About A Song<\/h2>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t
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Craig Finn\u2019s novel, cross-media approach to telling stories through Rock and Roll brings a new depth and vitality to his latest characters.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Review by Joseph Collum<\/em><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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The first words most listeners heard from Craig Finn were a Jack Kerouac reference in a song about Minneapolis poet John Berryman\u2019s suicide. \u201cThere are nights when I think that Sal Paradise was right. \u2018Boys and girls in America have such a sad time together,\u2019\u201d he sang on the opening track of Boys and Girls in America, <\/em>the 2006 breakthrough album of his band The Hold Steady. Jack Kerouac had been dead for almost forty years, and the generation of literary songwriters influenced by the beat poets were dying or releasing late career efforts to little fanfare. Finn was out of place.<\/p>

He looked out of place too. He looked like who he was: a kid from the upper-class Twin Cities suburbs who went to prep school, graduated from Boston College, and went to work at a consulting job. He wore glasses but not the cool kind of glasses, and he was never able to sing. But somewhere along the way, likely at a First Avenue Replacements all ages matinee, he got baptized in the church of Rock and Roll. Not the church of pop punk or indie rock, but the church founded on the literature of Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, and, further back, Hank Williams and Robert Johnson. He found a Vocation: to spread the gospel of Rock and Roll through stories about ne\u2019er-do-well Catholic school kids and their drug dealers and make certain that the human joy, sadness, and hope came across loud and clear before the guitar solo led the crowd into a pentecostal rage.<\/p>

On his new album Always Been<\/em> and the accompanying book of short fiction Lousy with Ghosts<\/em>, Finn investigates a man with a more traditional vocation. The album is a group of interconnected songs about a guy named Nathan, whose life leads him to becoming the pastor of a megachurch only to discover he doesn\u2019t believe in God, at least not yet. This character might seem like a strange fit for a rock album, but not for Finn. An off-and-on practicing Catholic<\/a>, Finn\u2019s second album with The Hold Steady was a rock opera about a hard-partying Catholic girl who burns out and stumbles into her redemption at the Easter Vigil mass.<\/p>

Nathan is less flashy than Finn\u2019s previous characters, but he\u2019s more fully fleshed out than any of them because of the prose work done in Lousy with Ghosts<\/em>. Reading Lousy with Ghosts<\/em> alongside the album is a lesson in artistic process. The book is unedited and self-released on Finn\u2019s merch store. It isn\u2019t great\u2014Finn can paint a scene with just a few details in a song, but he struggles when asked to stay in the scene in longer prose. But the book does help fill in the gaps of the album. For instance, \u201cNew Developments\u201d explains the reason \u201cthe cuffs they made a click as they wrapped around [Nathan\u2019s] wrists\u201d in the opening track \u201cBethany\u201d: Nathan was harassing his ex-wife and her new husband at the Jersey shore. The book also gives a fuller narrative of Nathan\u2019s marriage and of the guys in suits who promised to build him a megachurch with a crystal cross as they \u201cmade a big show of joining hands and praying\u201d at the restaurant, only for the deal to fall through (\u201cMissing Numbers\u201d). These stories provide useful context, but they lack the same captivating urgency as his lyrics. Finn finds himself hovering above his characters or deep in their internal monologues but rarely at the table with them. The struggle to enter the scene might come as a surprise to fans of The Hold Steady: his great gift is to tell the stories like he was the kid at the party who\u2019s still \u201call powered up on some new upper drug<\/a>.\u201d He never reaches that level of presence in these stories. Once again, he\u2019s a man about a song. \u00a0<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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Even in its wildest moments, Nathan\u2019s struggle appears so real that not understanding the root of the pain infuriates.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Always<\/em> Been<\/em> is about faith and vocation, but it\u2019s more about how the search for faith and vocation gets muddled in life\u2019s traumas and sins. The most interesting version of Nathan appears twice on the album, at two different crossroads. On \u201cA Man Needs a Vocation,\u201d Nathan is walking up a frontage road with a cane. He\u2019s put a rock in his shoe as some sort of self-mortification. He doesn\u2019t look good. It\u2019s here that he ends up sleeping in his car and believes he finds an answer to his pain in a windshield leaflet advertising the opportunity to become a pastor. But he burns out of that profession and his marriage to a parishioner, realizing \u201cit still felt pretty pointless when he prayed.\u201d He ends up couch hopping again, now an older man. This is the Nathan of the standout opening suite of \u201cBethany,\u201d \u201cPeople of Substance,\u201d and \u201cCrumbs.\u201d He\u2019s splitting time between his sister\u2019s house and his parents\u2019 beach house while caddying and hanging out with a night club dancer at the local bar. There\u2019s no rock in the shoe here, but he\u2019s carrying more than a life\u2019s worth of regret and failure. And, slowly, he seems to find something resembling faith. He claims to be \u201csaved,\u201d and renames himself \u201cClayton.\u201d<\/p>

The failure of Always Been <\/em>and Lousy with Ghosts<\/em> comes in Seattle. A young Nathan, just out of the military, takes a trip there with his friend Danny, and, without explanation, Nathan ends up dragging Danny\u2019s body into the bathtub and going through his pockets for loose change. Finn shows the trip to Seattle in the story \u201cA Kick through the Sheets\u201d and shows Nathan leaving Danny in the bathtub in the song \u201cI Walk with a Cane,\u201d but there\u2019s no indication about what happened in between. Vagaries in rock story songs are to be expected, but Nathan\u2019s whole life struggle seems to trace back to this moment, and it\u2019s unclear if he\u2019s a murderer or just someone who was in the wrong place at the wrong time. This frustration at the unnecessary mystery of Seattle is thrown into sharp relief by the quality of Finn\u2019s work throughout the rest of the album and book\u2014even in its wildest moments, Nathan\u2019s struggle appears so real that not understanding the root of the pain infuriates.<\/p>

Finn creates a new form with this album and book, building a much deeper narrative than any \u201880s rock opera. Though it\u2019s imperfect, the characters are alive. In 2017, Finn released a song called \u201cGod in Chicago<\/a>.\u201d He speaks the whole song except for the chorus, and it works as a complete narrative, not dependent on the musical accompaniment but elevated. The song is his best work to-date. Lousy with Ghosts<\/em> attempts to carry that concept across a whole record, and despite its flaws, Nathan has real joy, sadness, and hope. There are the beginnings of real stories here. And there are Dire Straits synths. And there are guitar solos. Finn continues to uphold his vocation.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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Joseph Collum<\/strong>\u00a0is a 2022 graduate of Dartmouth College with a B.A. in English and Creative Writing. Born in Mississippi and raised in Kentucky, he now lives in Philadelphia where he is teaching high school English. He is also working towards his Master\u2019s of Education as a member of the Alliance for Catholic Education at St. Joseph\u2019s University.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Always Been<\/em><\/strong> and its companion book Lousy with Ghosts<\/em> <\/strong>were released on April 4, 2025. The album was produced by Adam Granduciel. You can buy it here<\/a> and stream it here<\/a>. You can buy Lousy with Ghosts<\/em> here<\/a>.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Craig Finn\u2019s novel, cross-media approach to telling stories through Rock and Roll brings a new depth and vitality to his latest 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