5/21/2023 0 Comments The surge 2 finn![]() ![]() “City at Eleven” has very little going for it, and not even Craig Finn’s lyrical finesse or charisma seem to pull their typical weight over the directionless guitars. Unfortunately, there are also several moments on The Price of Progress that don’t quite land. It’s a joyous, no-frills rocker that reminds you why you fell in love with The Hold Steady in the first place. In a gleeful throwback, the boisterous “Flyover Halftime” resurrects a killer guitar riff from the band’s 2004 debut. There always seem to be little gems of truth buried throughout his ramblings this is perhaps more evident than ever as the songwriter spends more time looking in the rearview mirror throughout The Price of Progress. At some point, you have to stop and wonder just where Craig Finn truly ends and his quirky characters begin. And it’s hard not to smirk amidst the harmonic “ooh-ooh’s” sung over “Sideways Skull’s” crowd-ready hook: She’d like me better if I didn’t wear glasses. On “Understudies”, Finn touches on how his passion for playing music has taken a toll on his mental health, sounding noticeably exhausted as he croons: it’s hard to sleep after performing. There’s also a dark sense of humor and increased level of retrospection on The Price of Progress. This may sound gloomy, but the constant bursts of energy throughout the song give it an optimistic and magnetic appeal. Rather, this is someone who escapes from reality, watching basketball reruns with a pill bottle companion in reach. don’t conjure up images of a hopeless dope fiend with a needle buried in their arm. This is evident in the cinematic and bouncy “Sixers”, which examines someone in the throes of addiction, but not in the way you might expect. Everything has a more improvisation feel to it, with several songs that are hugely ambitious but unpredictable. Throughout the album, a generous mixture of trumpets, keys, and distorted guitars seem to be in constant rotation over Finn’s traditional spilling of the guts. This time it translates to the most structureless, bizarre set of tunes by The Hold Steady to date, reversing course from the more pop-oriented sheen of 2021’s Open Door Policy into a more nuanced version of their signature rock and roll. As the eccentric lead vocalist and songwriter of The Hold Steady for 25 years, he’s mastered the ability to turn the most ordinary day-to-day things into some sort of smoked-out philosophy – each album propping up average Joe’s as superheroes in the face of life’s darkest corners.Īh yes, there’s a whole lot of puzzling but brilliant nonsense floating around in Finn’s head, and this is as obvious as ever on The Price of Progress, the ninth album with his bigger-than-life bar band. When he goes on a tangent, it’s a thing to behold his unique perspectives and vocal inflections converge for an art form of their own. What do these things have in common? Probably nothing in theory, but this is simply part of Craig Finn’s genius. The following make an appearance on The Price of Progress: Robert Plant, black market cigarettes, church bells, flags made from bedsheets, LeBron James, a Skipper’s restaurant, and much more! Review Summary: Nothing is ever as simple as it initially seems with Craig Finn.
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