The Hold Steady’s Craig Finn sure knows his way around the teenage wasteland. Since 2004 the Minneapolis native has been chronicling the chemically induced ups and day-after come downs of America’s “we’re desperate, get used to it,” youth, and in so doing has established himself as the poet laureate of the can’t feel my face crowd.
In songs that owe a debt to the Born to Run-era Bruce Springsteen, the unlikely teen champion Finn–whose voice falls somewhere on the continuum between the Afghan Whigs’ Greg Dulli and a high school football coach–returns again and again to his favorite subject, the powders and pills and the damage down. You can find his kids at parties, the chillout tent at rock festivals, sleeping it off at afternoon matinees–anywhere and everywhere really, from your local florist to the laundromat.
On their third LP, 2006’s critically acclaimed Boys and Girls in America, the Hold Steady meld euphoric song craft–these songs soar–to Finn’s eye for the telling detail; his ability to channel the voices of kids walking the thin line between the bong hit and the detox unit (“We started recreational/It ended up all medical”) are surpassed, in this humble critic’s opinion, only by the Mountain Goat’s John Darnielle, whose We Shall All Be Saved had covered similar ground three years before. Both artists are empaths rather than Just Say No advocates; they sympathize with the lost boys (and girls) who populate their musical imaginations.
On song after song he drives home his message–the boys and girls of America “have such a sad time together,” and see wasted as the best way out. But he’s not talking exclusively to the kids–on the keyboard- and guitar-driven (the riff is straight up classic rock) “Stuck Between Stations” he name drops Jack Kerouac’s On the Road alter ego Sal Paradise before going on to tell the story of the poet John Berryman, struggled with alcoholism before leaping to his death off a bridge into the Mississippi River in Minneapolis (most of Finn’s songs are set in the Twin Cities).
“There was that night,” Finn declaims to the accompaniment of a very Roy Bittan piano, “we thought John Berryman could fly/But he didn’t/So he died” before linking Berryman’s fate to the kids he’s singing about: “We all tumbled down and/Drowned in the Mississippi River/We drink/We dry up/Then we crumble to dust.”
On the very Thin Lizzy “Hot Soft Light” (“Chips Ahoy” also crosses into Thin Lizzy territory) he channels the voice of a kid trying to talk his way out of trouble in a court of law. “I was not involved at the Northtown Mall/As a matter of fact I didn’t even know where that happened” he explains, before elucidating: “I’ve been straight since Cinco de Mayo/Before that I was blotto/I was blacked out/I was cracked out/I was caved in/You should have seen all those portals/That I’ve powered up in.” He concludes, “There are nights/When it all comes on a little too bright/There’s a cross/And in the center there is a hot soft light.”
“Some Kooks” comes on like Uriah Heep on speed and sounds like a war story you might hear in the confines of your neighborhood NA meeting; “They found me in a florist,” sings Finn, “I was fried and out of focus/I was kicking it with chemists.” His pal Gideon’s “got a pipe made from a Pringles can,” he knows some kooks who “don’t shoot but they sure do sniff,” and as for a certain unnamed somebody, “She said it’s hard to feel holy when you can’t get clean/Now she’s bumping up against the washing machine/She said it’s hard to slow down when you’re picking up speed.”
The homage to wasted love that is “Party Pit” opens with a drum roll, soon to be joined by Franz Nicolay’s piano; ‘I guess I met her at the party pit,” sings Finn, “She said those kids were sellin’ it/And so we sailed off on some separate trips/And she got pinned down at the party pit.” The song ends with Finn repeating “Gonna walk around and drink some more” over and over again–get pinned down in the party pit, and life becomes a perpetual Groundhog Day.
“Citrus” could be a song off Springsteen’s The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle. It’s acoustic and elegiac in tone, and even its lyrics have the Boss’ fingerprints all over ‘em: “I feel Jesus in the clumsiness of young and awkward lovers/I feel Judas in the long odds of the rackets on the corner/I feel Jesus in the tenderness of honest, nervous lovers/I feel Judas in the pistols and pagers that come with all the powders.” “Citrus” is a grace point in the album’s chaotic whirl, and lovely as a cool summer night spent gazing at the Minnesota stars.
“Massive Nights” celebrates the high times when every drug-lubed gear in the holy machinery turns in sync: “The guys are feeling good about their liquor run/The girls are kinda flirting with the setting sun/We all kind of fumbled through the jitterbug/We were all powered up on some new upper drug/And everything was partying/Everyone was pretty.” But just as in the other songs, the good times have to end: the song closes with the lines, “She had a gun in her mouth/And she was shootin’ up at her dreams/When the chaperone said that we’d been crowned/The king and queen.”
“Chillout Tent” is about an unlikely (and very short-lived romance) in a freak-out tent at a rock festival in Western Massachusetts. She comes from Boden with “a carload of girlfriends/To meet some boys and maybe eat some mushrooms.” He comes because “The festival seemed like a pretty good plan/Cruise some chicks and get a suntan.” She freaks out on the mushrooms; he overdoes it on pills (“And his friend gave him four, but said only take one/But then he got bored and ended up taking all four”), and they both end up in the freak-out tent. Guest vocalist Dana Kletter and–I’m not sure who plays the part of the guy–take it from there, exchanging lines about what happens next, and their voices are innocent, and very confused, and for once it’s not Finn looking on from the distance–the lost kids are speaking for themselves.
“First Night” ties the album together. It’s a stately, piano-based thing, and starts way down low only to climb majestic heights. It tells the story of Holly, who’s “inconsolable/Unhinged and uncontrollable/’Cause we can’t get as high as we got/On that first night,” and shifts gears when Finn repeats the song’s title over and over again against an ecstatic musical backdrop. Finn understands it’s impossible to chase the dragon without getting burned (“Holly’s not invincible/In fact she’s in the hospital”) and in this regard he’s closer to the Neil Young of Tonight’s the Night (tired eyes indeed) than the romantic-at-heart Bruce Springsteen.
It’s no coincidence that the LP opens with a reference to Sal Paradise. The boys and girls in Finn’s songs aren’t just partying because they have nothing better to do; they’re a short-cut to salvation. Trapped betwixt Heaven and Hell, they learn the hard way there’s no such thing as instant satori. As Kerouac himself once said, “Walking on water wasn’t built in a day.” Or one high at a time, either. The only way out is through.
GRADED ON A CURVE:
A
