The Hold Steady’s Craig Finn Begins Anew With ‘Preludes’

The Hold Steady bandleader Craig Finn recently announced We All Want the Same Things, his third solo album and the follow-up to 2014's Faith in the Future. Today, he's shared the album's first single, "Preludes," an ode to the art of keeping on, which reprises the workingman's rock palette that has become synonymous with not only Finn's solo work, but his career with the Hold Steady (and, to a lesser, more spiritual extent, his old post-hardcore band Lifter Puller). That means burly, major-key power chords, insistent backbeats and, of course, snide, prosaic lyrics detailing modern American life at its most depressing — and inspiring.

In "Preludes"' case, "inspiration" means finding the metaphysical silver lining in the most miserable, morbid situations, usually brought about by — wait for it — booze. "I got stuck in a snowbank / I was too drunk to drive to Edina," recalls the lifelong Catholic by way of his usual throaty growl, before offering his thesis: "Right there is proof of my faith that God watches us." Amen. Listen below, and scroll down for Finn's comments to NPR regarding the new album and its barstool sermon-cum-single.

Craig Finn's new solo album, We All Want the Same Things, arrives March 24 via Partisan. It'll be up for pre-order starting tomorrow.

Craig Finn on We All Want the Same Things and "Preludes":

Shortly after the release of Faith in the Future in September 2015, I got together with producer Josh Kaufman to talk about making another record. I had been writing a ton, and wanted to follow up quickly on the last album.

I had been thinking about love and partnership in modern times. I had written a lot of songs about couples. Love seems like the biggest mystery in our modern days — no amount of science or advances in technology can help us fully understand the notion of love and the role it plays in our lives. But I also thought about the search for love as an antidote for loneliness, and how so often modern partnership can be an alignment of self-interests. We make teams with each other to combat the world around us. There is a beauty in that, for sure, but it also can fray around the edges. We lean against each other to keep ourselves upright, make uneasy truces and push forward into uneasy times. The songs I had dwelled on this.

We started working in short sessions starting November 2015 and kept it going over the next year. As on Faith in the Future, percussionist Joe Russo and engineer Dan Goodwin were prominent parts of the sessions. We had developed a vocabulary and a style of working that felt comfortable — maybe like a band making their second or third record.

That said, we also wanted create something different and new, so we invited a lot of other people to collaborate. We held a big session at the Clubhouse in Rhinebeck, N.Y., in the spring of 2016 that yielded most of the songs that made final cut. We finished by inviting friends and family to help with overdubs over the summer in Brooklyn. Before long, we had a record we loved.

We named this collection We All Want the Same Things after a line in the song 'God in Chicago.' It seems like a bit of dark humor in these turbulent political times, but it also rings true: No matter our differences, we all have some very basic wants and needs that line up with each other. The characters in these songs are normal people trying to help themselves, trying to move forward, and in some cases trying just to survive. All the while, they are negotiating what space the others in their lives can occupy.

As for 'Preludes,' this was what I remember 1994 being like, coming back to the Twin Cities after being away for college. It's a time in my life that I felt most adrift, but there was a also a feeling of wonder in being out of step and alone. This is the song that is closest to being autobiographical, but I think it fits with these other character studies. I was trying to figure out my place in a world that didn't seem to have a lot of room for me.