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| The Hold Steady | ||||
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by Chris Bodenner
A reader writes:
As far as contemporary music that can be thought of as Christian yet still pass the "sniff test", recent Colbert guests The Hold Steady fit the bill. Their latest album, "Heaven is Whenever", is a more rough-edged tour of spiritual feelings than Sufjan Stevens' maddeningly lovely, folksy records. Here's a bonus track titled "Ascension Blues."
P.S. Lead singer Craig Finn has sported a pretty sweet beard recently.
Finn 
Boston College, which is a Catholic college. I guess as I got to be about 30, I started thinking more, and bigger things were happening — like, your problems when you're 30 are bigger than your problems when you're 20. Family, health things, whatever. Things that drive people back to faith.
I started really thinking about the role the church played in my own life, and the fact that even though I didn't believe every little bit of what the Pope thinks, there's a lot of beauty in the Catholic church and a lot of beauty in the teachings. Things like forgiveness and redemption, the Ten Commandments, it's hard to argue these as negative things.
So, it's kind of embracing the Catholic church as my own culture, and my own ancestors and my own background, their way of explaining morality and explaining some of the wonder of the world that's beyond our grasp.
The Dish 