Craig Finn’s a deadpan voice with an American anthology. With the Hold Steady, Finn wrote the “Great American Novel” pressed to black acetate, giving life to a set of characters spanning songs and albums’ worth of American boredom — characters tired of their own bad luck and characters who just barely missed that last ride out of town. The band’s second album, Separation Sunday, fits right at home on a shelf between Faulkner and Fitzgerald, while Boys and Girls in America is a layman’s The Pastures of Heaven set in the Minneapolis rock scene.
Finn’s latest solo work, Faith in the Future, fits somewhere in the same storyline, maybe as an aside or an epilogue. For one, his characters have grown up: the Charlemagnes and Stevie Nickses are now middle-aged apostles named Tom, Sarah and Sandra, individuals who only remember the times way back when. Tom’s a skeptic from Finn’s bar band youth; Sarah used to have an eye for the horse races (think “Chips Ahoy!”); Sandra is an upstate refugee from the rock clubs. These aren’t the anti-heroes of old — they’re just living to live.
But the aged tone Finn takes isn’t Faith’s biggest departure. Those who’ve followed his story throughout the Hold Steady’s career know that Finn was only as strong as the music behind him: Charlemagne’s attitude is as indebted to Finn’s writing as it is to the guitar pop of the Hold Steady. Without his full-time band backing him, Finn’s delivery sounds a little naked. It’s something that the studio-rock atmosphere behind Faith — as tight as it is — can’t really compensate for.
That said, Finn can still weave together some wry storytelling and a steady arrangement. The Tunnel of Love guitars on “Newmyer’s Roof” wind around Finn’s pleas beautifully. Like a “Penny Lane” with a gallop, “Saint Peter Upside Down” tumbles through the black comedy of Saint Peter’s martyrdom and New York wanderlust. There’s even an optimistic spin through ’50s R&B in “I Was Doing Fine (Then a Few People Died),” a song that juxtaposes nicely with the empty bottles and broken hearts of maybe his best written, post-Hold Steady dirge.