Always Been is the sixth solo album by the American musician and the Hold Steady member Craig Finn, released on Tamarac Recordings and Thirty Tigers on April 4, 2025. The album features the members of the War on Drugs backing Finn.
Writing for Mojo Magazine, Andrew Perry states that it "charts the fall and redemption of a clergyman lacking in faith, but such is the novelistic depth of Finn's fiction that thereâÂÂs ample room for familiar blue-collar tropes (fiscal strife, domestic tension, drinking, upping sticks to start over), plus lashings of trademark Catholic guilt." In a Paste Magazine review, Hayden Merrick wrote that the album "presents FinnâÂÂs most cohesive overarching story. Usually working with capsule standalone vignettes that connect thematically but not directly, he instead constructs an extended epic centered on an ex-reverend", noting that "WhatâÂÂs unique about Clayton compared to other Craig Finn-penned protagonists is that his protracted journey of self-improvement necessitates a rejection of the road", he concludes by saying that "Craig Finn gives us more hope than ever within Always Been's pages, but that hope only arrives after tragedy."