And we do have good reason to throw a party. Craig Finn is the perfect mixture of Damon Runyan and William Butler Yeats: he has an ear for the dialect, but he keeps his eye on some grand apocalyptic vision of the end times. Whether the times in question are the end of the world as we know it or just of the world as we knew it in late adolescence: well! there’s the fun of the whole thing. There’s always been a touch of Springsteen in both of his voices (his narrative voice and his singing voice, I mean); he’s giving it free play now, especially on “Certain Songs,” seeing what happens to the essentially idealistic voice perfected by Springsteen on Born to Run when you subject it to the memory of too much cocaine and hard liquor instead of beer, and then throw in a little early-twenties meaningless desperation-sex in the place of Springsteen’s somewhat quaint faith in the holiness of virginity and its loss. “I guess you’re old enough to know/the kids out on the west coast are takin’ off their clothes,” sings Finn over a Springsteen-on-Southern-Lord riff. There is a poignancy in trying to figure out who he’s addressing. |