Anything that Craig Finn touches will always have the air of expectation of several things: plaintive, honest, songwriting, hyper-lexical verbose lyrics that touch on faith, hope and love, and some acoustic tearjerkers. Rest easy, Finn devotees—all of that’s here, and then some. For Always Been, though, he calls in some favors from The War On Drugs’ Adam Granduciel and his bandmates as well. Granduciel is certainly popular lately, having already produced Sam Fender’s recent album People Watching as well as Finn’s effort here.
It’s not immediately obvious that he’s on the levers here, however—Always Been opens with a by-the-numbers Craig Finn song in “Bethany” as he combines interesting lyrics—seemingly the tale of a Reverend having his faith tested by a desirable woman and wistfully dreaming of a different life—with a plodding, country-style tune. There are all the distinctive Craig Finn points here—The lyrics are excellent, and his voice is as recognizeable as it has been on any recording. His homespun charm and ability to construct a yarn are in no short supply. It’s disappointing, then, that the tune’s something of a plodder and gets the album off to a flat, melancholy start.
Thankfully, “People Of Substance,” despite quite heartbreaking subject matter (it being a lament to a seeming lost love), is much more up-tempo and gets the album on track to where you’d expect it to be. Finn’s strength, either solo or in The Hold Steady, has always been to balance the melancholy with a tuneful backing, and he straddles the line perfectly here and on “Crumbs”, never knowingly falling into self-pity and maintaining some hopefulness throughout: “We’ll never win this war but maybe we can wait it out” is a beautiful lyric and sums up the hopefulness in hopelessness that always seems to pervade Finn’s songwriting output.
We finally hear some The War On Drugs influence in the synth-led “Luke & Leanna,” a lyrically opaque tale of some sort of betrayal. While it’s hard to parse, that makes for a better song, and it lingers in the mind after listening. Aurally, it almost feels like a song rescued from an 80s archive—It’s excellent and backed up nicely with its sonic brother on the album, “A Man Needs A Vocation”, the most obvious statement of Finn’s musical leanings being influenced by Granduciel on the whole record. These are two high points, too, so having him at the controls wasn’t wasted.
Unfortunately, those high points are often bookended by screeching stops and more plodders. “The Man I’ve Always Been” is, again, lyrically interesting and leans into the overarching narrative of that preacher or reverend’s life and everything that happens around him. Lyrically, once again, it’d be churlish to complain about the quality. Finn’s stories are always captivating. Musically, however, it’s Dylan-adjacent without ever threatening to scratch that level of quality. Similarly, ‘Fletchers’ strikes me as largely an interesting writing and recording exercise. It’s spoken-word, different, and in a sense, mesmerizing, but its placement —cleaving the album in two—just didn’t work for me at all.
You can say the same about the back end of the album, too. For all the quality of “Vocation,” “I Walk With A Cane” and “Clayton” don’t ever get beyond a simmer in the audience appreciation stakes. Fortunately, the record seems to hide the breakout song well, as its penultimate track “Postcards” is truly excellent. A poppy, upbeat lament (such is the dichotomy of Finn again) to far-flung places not visited, it’s by far the most memorable song on the album and has all the hallmarks of a breakout hit.
Ultimately, Finn proves his hypothesis—Almost every song sets out something that could be beautiful, but for reasons of betrayal, mistakes, failure or loss, never quite makes it. That could almost be a metaphor for his output here. Always Been is full of high points, but its low points lead to an uneven experience that ends up being less than the sum of its parts.
