Written by: Geoff Tischman
“Playing my first ever show in Fairfield CT tomorrow night,” Craig Finn Tweeted the other night. “Have a fantastic band backing me. Let’s hang.”
And hang out, we did.
Backed by Josh Kaufman (guitar), Will Berman (bass), and Matt Barrick (drums), Finn wasn’t joking about his band being fantastic. While his rhythm section was tight and crisp, Finn was in fine form, digging into his songbook and playing tracks from his first two solo albums as well as a few from his upcoming new one.
Finn is, quite frankly, one of the most astonishing lyricists around. His streetwise poeticism falls somewhere between Springsteen’s The Wild The Innocent And The E Street Shuffle and John Berryman’s The Dream Songs. Wildly tangential, intertextual and post-modern, Finn is nothing short of a master and his set was breathless and invigorating.
He played:
- Screenwriters School
- Three Drinks
- Maggie I’ve Been Searching For Our Son
- Christine
- Going To a Show
- Extras
- Sarah, Calling From a Hotel
- Sandra From Scranton
- Untitled (new song)
- Newmyer’s Roof
- Trapper Avenue
- I Was Doing Fine (Then a Few People Died)
