January 6–13, 2000

disc quicks|rock/pop

Crooked Fingers

Crooked Fingers

(Warm)

Eric Bachmann must be tired of screaming. As singer for amicably defunct Archers of Loaf, his barking voice had to compete with a mighty racket, pushing his surreal lyrics through the din. Crooked Fingers is his chance to tone things down with subdued guitars, unfussy loops and dark, supportivestrings. The most striking thing about Crooked Fingers is Bachmann’s voice, both the keening falsetto and the gravelly croon that sounds like Tom Waits the week before he started gargling with Drano. Bachmann’s quiet new world is appealing but uneven, with spacious arrangements thatare more fleshed out than demos, but have less depth and texture than a full band. Crooked Fingers is held together by the recurring images of death ("Juliette," "Under Sad Stars") and drowning, whether in vast seas ("Black Black Ocean") or smaller measures("New Drink for the Old Drunk"). Unfortunately, the lyrics are frightfully uneven — for every bull’s-eye image ("She swallowed everything they sold/ And then she swallowed herself whole"), there’s a wincing clunker like "She Spread Her Legs and FlewAway," which loses its half-witted charm with each repetition. If Bachmann can find a way to be as consistently compelling here as he’s been rocking out, Crooked Fingers could be a worthy successor to his Archers successes.

—Brian Glaser