"Dig yourself into a deeper hole/ Deeper than the deepest hole you know," sings Eric Bachmann on his eponymous Crooked Fingers album. It's a line that seems less suited for his latest project than a perfect summation of his former band, onetime indie-rock heroes Archers of Loaf. Throughout their bruised and battered lifespan, it seemed as if the Archers were intent on digging their own grave, eschewing the heady guitar squall of Icky Mettle for increasingly darker tales of despair and collapse.
On their final album, White Trash Heroes, they managed to achieve the kind of self-negating, black-hole sonics that few bands besides Nirvana or Radiohead have ever reached (or tried to reach). Where before the Archers' guitars would ramble and bump into each other with clumsy abandon, on White Trash Heroes they were strung with razor wire, wrapping lacerating riffs around Bachmann's ruined throat, and hurling the songs headlong into the void. You can almost hear the band itself blinking out of existence as the searing tones of the last track are cut short in mid-flight.
Crooked Fingers is the sound of Bachmann finally reaching the bottom of the bottomless pit and finding that it isn't such a bad place after all. Despite his recurring lyrical themes of drinking, darkness, decay, being broken, being set on fire, creeping evil, and more drinking, the music possesses a sort of dignified grace, illuminating crumbling and bombed-out neighborhoods with a few sepia-toned rays of light. Gone are the Archers' distortion pedals and conventional guitar-rock context. They're replaced by countryish fingerpicking, chiming arpeggios, and warm, sweeping strings. It's easily the most thoughtful, cohesive work Bachmann has ever recorded.
Archers albums were inventive yet haphazard affairs, with one or two tracks that felt out of place or were just plain bad; Crooked Fingers is the product of a more focused artistic vision, and thus has a welcome consistency of tone and quality. Of course, one man's consistency is another man's "repetitive and boring." And yes, Bachmann does tend to repeat himself lyrically, but at least he's rediscovered the time-honored pop-music tradition of juxtaposing his depressing lyrics with pretty melodies (a trait noticeably lacking from later Archers material-- at least the pretty melodies part).
The believability factor of Crooked Fingers might also be an issue for some; while we hear Tom Waits' weathered croak of a voice and can imagine that he's lived through the songs he's written, the same voice and songs coming from an indie rocker like Bachmann are slightly less convincing. Regardless, his singing has clearly improved over the years and complements the newfound Mercury Rev-like lushness of the music well-- be it his trademark growl on rousing beer-hall singalongs like "New Drink for the Old Drunk" or a wistful falsetto on shimmery ballads such as "Crowned in Chrome" and "Broken Man."
So go ahead, have another drink or three. Stay up all night wallowing in self-pity and disgust. Crooked Fingers understands; Eric Bachmann will be right beside you, waiting to greet the crack of dawn with bleary eyes and a mixture of disappointment and relief that the rest of the world hasn't yet been destroyed.
