Craig Finn, Clear Heart Full Eyes (Full Time Hobby) **** (From York Press)

Craig Finn, Clear Heart Full Eyes (Full Time Hobby) ****

12:14pm Friday 27th January 2012 in CD reviews By Julian Cole

THE Hold Steady earned their cult status through rough-edged, Springsteen-esque songs that re-examine adolescence two decades on. Tales of drugged decline and redemption of sorts peaked in Boys And Girls In America, although subsequent albums have had much to say.

There have been indications that singer Craig Finn wanted to move in different directions, an apparent wish that finds expression in his first solo album. Clear Heart Full Eyes steps away from bar-room blues indie rock and instead chooses a country feel, with plaintive pedal-steel guitar adding another voice to the narrative-style songs, in which Finn tells stories bleak and beautiful, damaged and reaffirming.

Opener Apollo Bay sets the mood with a contemplative country song reminiscent of Lucinda Williams. No Future shows how Finn can summon up a life with the deft touch of a short-story writer, “By the way you picked up the phone, I knew you weren’t going to die/ February is as long as it’s wide…” Balcony and Rented Room continue the common themes of love found and lost, while Not Much Left Of Us considers the destructive power of cigarettes and life in general.

New Friend Jesus is a jaunty tale of being friends with Christ – one of many songs to reference religion – which comments on “sucking at sports” because “it’s hard to catch with holes right through your hands”.

Hopefully, Finn has not finished with the exhilarating swagger of, say, Sequestered In Memphis, but these quieter songs have their own low-key charms, away from the glorious clatter of The Hold Steady.