Cracker lead singer David Lowery has been doing it a long time. Next year will mark the 25th anniversary of the band and there's still that bit of bite in its music that reminds you that rock and roll keeps you young and it also keeps a little chip on your shoulder. Cracker began 14 years before Craig Finn and the rest of his Minneapolis buds started out as The Hold Steady and we hear in Lowery a writer who might have been an influence on Finn's characteristic style. The way that these two men tell a story is the way that you light a fuse, or the way that Yosemite Sam or Wile E. Coyote light a fuse. It's one that's sizzling from the start and then there are issues and hiccups. It's a long fuse that keeps gathered momentum. The inertia builds and builds and there's no clean ending. Sometimes there's not even an explosion at the end of it. It might just hiss away, creating a character sketch unlike most.