Photo credit: Shervin Lainez
The Hold Steady’s Craig Finn has announced details of his forthcoming fourth solo album (and third in a trilogy of inter-linked records) ‘I Need a New War’ and released new single ‘Blankets’. The record will be released via Partisan Records on 26 April.
‘Blankets’ offers the perfect introduction to the character studies that Craig offers on the new record, revealing how ordinary people are attempting to navigate through the extraordinary and fast-paced times we now live in – especially in Craig’s adopted hometown of New York City.
Over Modest Mouse-esque guitar (and a perfectly placed harmonica solo towards the end), Craig muses: ‘When you panic in the city, it feels like one too many walls. When it thunders in the canyon, you get the feeling you’re too small’ before then embodying the figures he’s talking about and the trials and tribulations they are living through: ‘I found a saviour, then I lost him. Had a kid and all the rest. Then the doctor left a message, said we’re looking at these numbers from your tests’. These poignant observations continue as he then ponders how ‘You live your whole life just to travel to the place you’re gonna die. You travel your whole life just to get out the place you’re gonna die’.
