It took a good amount of time to get them through our thick ears, but Craig Finn and The Hold Steady finally gave us so many chances to “get” their literate, character-study rock and roll that we finally…”got” them (we wrote about that “get” HERE).

Last Friday (on 9/11) singer-songwriter Finn released a new solo album, Faith In The Future, that kicks off superbly with track Maggie I’ve Been Searching for Our Son.  Check the just-released official video below.  We love everything about the recorded version, including the chugging synth and keys, the live-wire guitar and the ghost-chorus relay.  But as usual we particularly marvel at Finn’s well-wrought lyrics, which frequently mine the Springsteen vein (but with perhaps more attention paid to the poetry-Geiger). Finn (raised a Catholic) has said this about the song: “It’s partially because it affects my worldview. I wasn’t raised in a super-strict Catholic house. But we spent enough time in church and also going to all the [Sunday school] classes. So that’s kind of how you learn. By turning you over to the church, that’s one way your parents attempt to teach you morality. So it affects a lot of things in the way I think. In this case, I’m obviously playing with the idea of the son being Christ and the son being someone’s actual son. I thought that song was about someone wrapping up their life and trying to get some closure on things. A lot of this album was written in the time when my mother passed away two years ago.  I keep saying that none of the songs directly address that loss, but the first line of the record is, ‘There’s a darkness in my body’ [from “Maggie, I’ve Been Searching For Our Son]. So I was somewhat thinking about mortality there and leaving this Earth on a good place.  The song is about someone at the end of their time on earth, looking back on their life, but also trying to wrap up a few loose ends.”   Maggie I’ve Been Searching for Our Son’s worthy lyrics are at bottom, though you can start with these excerpts:

“If you’re down and out.
If you still have any doubts.
If you doubt that there’s a savior yet to come.

Stop doing what you’re doing.
Close your eyes and keep on breathing
And slowly turn your face up to the sun….

There’s a darkness in my body.
And I think I might be ready.

If you’re stuck down South
If you still have any doubts.
If you doubt that there’s a heaven yet to come….”

For a great glimpse of the song’s lived-in poetics, watch at bottom as Finn perform’s the song solo and unplugged for KEXP recently.   Go HERE to watch the entire KEXP session.

Faith in the Future is out now on Partisan Records, and is highly recommended.  Go pick it up HERE.

Maggie I’m Still Searching For Our Son:

“There’s a darkness in my body
And I think I might be ready.
Maggie I’ve been searching for our son.
There’s a big hole in my thinking.
Lately I’ve been seeing things.
Maggie I’m still searching for our son.

If you’re down and out.
If you still have any doubts.
If you doubt that there’s a savior yet to come.

Stop doing what you’re doing.
Close your eyes and keep on breathing
And slowly turn your face up to the sun.

It was warm in Arizona.
It was cold in Colorado.
Maggie I’ve been searching for our son.
There were crosses on the altar.
There was gold in El Dorado.
Maggie I’ve got blisters on my thumbs.

If you’re all strung out.
If you still have any doubts.
If you doubt that there’s a rapture yet to come.

Hey, pick up the paper
See the stories and the pictures.
A kid went to the movies with a gun.

There’s a house out in the desert.
And I lived there with some people.
Maggie that guy said he was our savior.
But once he took our women
And turned us into his soldiers.
He hit a patch of radical behavior.
And the ATF were belligerent.
There were handcuffed girls with barely any clothes.

There was power in their numbers.
There was silver in their holsters.
And the trucks as they rolled slowly up the road.

There’s a darkness in my body.
And I think I might be ready.

If you’re stuck down South
If you still have any doubts.
If you doubt that there’s a heaven yet to come.

There’s a darkness in my body
And I think I might be ready.
Maggie I’ve been searching for our son.
Maggie I’ve been searching for our son.”