Album Review: Craig Finn – Always Been

There’s something quietly revolutionary about the way Craig Finn has always approached storytelling through song. Not in grand political statements or experimental soundscapes, but in his stubborn insistence that ordinary lives—with their quiet desperation, small victories, and accumulated disappointments—deserve to be chronicled with care and precision.

On his sixth solo album, Always Been, Finn continues mapping this territory with the steady hand of someone who’s been drawing the same landscape for decades, not because he’s run out of places to go, but because he keeps finding new details in familiar corners.

The album title suggests a kind of settled identity, an acknowledgment that at this point in his career—decades in as both frontman of The Hold Steady and solo artist—Finn knows exactly who he is as a songwriter. There’s comfort in that certainty, but also the risk of stagnation. What saves Always Been from feeling like a retread is the subtle shift in Finn’s perspective: less the omniscient narrator, more the empathetic witness.

This subtle evolution is complemented by production from Adam Granduciel of The War on Drugs, who brings his trademark atmospheric touch without overwhelming Finn’s literary sensibilities. The musical palette is rich but restrained—shimmering guitars, understated synths, anchoring pianos—creating environments rather than attention-grabbing arrangements. It’s music made to support stories rather than compete with them.

The album opens with “Bethany,” a piano-driven narrative about a man who becomes a reverend without genuine faith—just a desire for purpose or perhaps attention. “I never had a calling it was just a strong desire / To be the one that stood up in the room,” Finn confesses in his characteristically talk-singing delivery, the admission landing not as scandal but as a quiet truth. It sets the tone for an album concerned with the gap between who we are and who we’ve pretended to be.

“People of Substance” builds on this theme with more propulsive energy, as the narrator reaches out to an ex named Dana, claiming transformation while still processing what went wrong. “I’m sorry about the way that I scared you,” he offers, though his promises of change ring hollow against the backdrop of “a city still lousy with ghosts.” The song epitomizes Finn’s gift for self-interrogation without self-aggrandizement—just people trying to make sense of their mistakes.

Among the album’s most affecting moments is “Crumbs,” which sketches a fractured household with devastating economy: a daughter barely eating, an exhausted mother working shifts, a father retreated into silence. “There’s crumbs around the corner of her mouth / You can hear the highway from their house / The traffic sounds like water in a river rushing south,” Finn observes with unflinching clarity. In these mundane details, he elevates emotional touchstones that rarely make it into songs intact.

Similarly nuanced is “Luke and Leanna,” portraying a childless couple confronting the shape their life has taken. The song has that cinematic expanse that makes The War On Drugs’ music the perfect driving soundtrack. “On weeknights they stay in / Takeout and watch TV / Red wine and Chinese / And early to bed,” Finn sings, capturing their routine as they nurse an unnamed anxiety about choices made or not made. When Leanna wonders, “What’s the point of this whole thing?” it’s suburban existentialism rendered without mockery.

The emotional centre of the album might be “Fletcher’s,” which unfolds like overheard confessions the morning after a party. With minimal musical adornment, Finn tells of a girl named Steph, Coors beer, late-night kitchen conversations, and the dawning realization that escape plans—the big move, the fresh start—probably won’t materialize. “I don’t want to be some dude that makes a big deal out of moving then comes back a few months later a total goddamn failure,” the narrator admits, presumably preferring comfortable failure to ambitious disappointment.

When I first encountered Finn’s storytelling through The Hold Steady years ago, what struck me was how he elevated ordinary American lives to the level of mythology without sacrificing their authenticity. That band became the first concert my son ever witnessed—at just one year old—because there seemed to be something important about introducing him to music with substance.

Even the album’s more faith-adjacent tracks—”The Man I’ve Always Been” or “A Man Needs a Vocation”—avoid preaching. No spiritual revelations, just quiet admissions. “Honestly I’ve been a couple people / No one that I’d want to be again / I’ve dressed up like a husband / I’ve witnessed like a preacher / But maybe this is who I’ve always been,” Finn sings, his characters not seeking God so much as a purpose and a reason to keep moving forward.

Finn’s vocal approach remains distinctive—halfway between speaking and singing, emotionally present without technical flourishes. Guest vocalists, including Kathleen Edwards (on three tracks) and Sam Fender (on “Postcards”), weave through without displacing Finn’s centrality to these narratives.

“Postcards” meditates on places never visited and friends whose lives unfold at a distance. “Oh, the places we’ll never go / Poughkeepsie and the Panhandle Coast,” Finn muses, acknowledging roads not taken as the postcards from distant friends end up “taped to the fridge,” their corners curling.

The album closes with “Shamrock,” a suburban tragedy about a couple struggling at the margins. “She met him after summer school / At a Hiawatha bus stop / In a knockoff Celtics jacket / Said his crew they call him Shamrock,” Finn narrates, before following their descent into poverty and crime. It’s a fitting conclusion when their daughter “keeps asking about her father” after he’s arrested in a credit union robbery—a reminder of how quickly lives can unravel.

Recorded in 2024 at One Cue Studio in Burbank, Always Been works as a collection of short films—each track its own small universe, yet contributing to a cohesive emotional landscape. It’s not a radical departure for Finn, but it doesn’t need to be. At this stage, his strength lies in refinement rather than reinvention.

What makes the album linger is Finn’s unflinching attention to the mundane sadness of life, observed without embellishment or evasion. It’s a record not about grand redemption but about daily survival and the unexpected moments of grace that sometimes appear when least anticipated. In chronicling these small mercies with such precision and care, Finn reminds us why his voice remains essential.

Always Been is released April 4 via Tamarac Recordings / Thirty Tigers

Photography: Lee Allen & Dan Monick