At the end of the day, songs are stories - messages wrapped in sound that are designed to make you feel. In some songs the story is simple, the lyric sparse and straightforward - often accompanied by an elaborate musical wrapper that gives the words weight - but in other songs - in a song like this - it's the other way around. I like songs like this...
Craig Finn is a wonderful storyteller - I fell in love with his lyrics on the Hold Steady's fourth album Stay Positive (which also happens to hold a track that's already on this list that contains one of my favorite guitar solos, thanks Tad!) He writes about the grit of the inner city, of relationships, of drugs and religion and the stories are captivating.
The track is beautifully stripped down - he's speaking not singing, and the imagery is captivating. For anyone that's lost someone - metaphorically or literally to substance abuse, the words are going to ring true. It's a sad, sad story that lifts the veil on what it means to be human and to suffer loss and yet still want to be, to want to live and thrive and yet, well, he tells it better than me...
You can learn more about Craig Finn here:
About the Curator - Andrew McCluskey
The first visual memory I have is that of the white upright piano in Singapore, Hell and the dark forces lived at the bottom, Heaven and the Angels at the top. They would play battles through my fingers and I was hooked.
Although I've always played, I haven't always been a musician. Most of my twenties were spent working with people, buying and selling and learning how the world works. It was in my thirties that I came to America and focused on music and began to develop music2work2.
Music to Grieve to is often sourced from entries at The Grief Directory. If you know of an organization or product that has helped you and you'd like to raise their visibility, then please tell us about them over at griefdirectory.org
