CROOKED FINGERS - Dignity And Shame

Eric Bachmann is one of the most interesting musicians of the Nineties. Guitarist and singer of rock band Archers Of Loaf, author of instrumentals straddling world-music and new age in his solo project Barry Black, and now the man channeling all of his influences under the banner of American tradition with Crooked Fingers. Bachmann is all of this, but above all he's a songwriter of real class: "Dignity and Shame" (the fourth record of his latest project) only confirms it once more. This despite the fact that we're not faced with a record so brilliant it dazzles unconditionally: it's simply a string of songs, good songs, some better, some less so, the country-folk alter ego of the National's last record, "Alligator".

The album actually opens with a Tex-Mex instrumental with a Calexico flavor, "Islero", driven by acoustic guitar, marked out by percussion and buoyed by repeated horn entrances. Don't be fooled by the dark strings that introduce the second track: "Weary Arms" (one of the most accomplished pieces here) is a delicate, perfect pop song chiseled out of rivers of slide guitar, with Bachmann's deep, evocative timbre paired with a female voice (the use of dual vocals characterizes virtually the whole album). Next comes "Call to Love", which takes on a more driving pace, mid-tempo rock reminiscent of Springsteen, though less incisive and more tender.

In the long elegy of "Twilight Creeps" it's the piano instead that dominates the valley across which Bachmann's lyrics unfurl in full: trumpet solos midway through and at the close of the track are noble bursts of feeling. Another peak, the highest point of the whole record, is "Destroyer": dry percussion and piano (this time fully arranged) accompany a web of guitar that paints a relaxed plain before building to a muted explosion of electric guitars in the background, with drums growing ever more insistent.

From here on there are a couple of filler tracks: we're talking about the ramshackle (relatively speaking, on a record as classically built as this one) country-rock of "Valerie" and the anthem "Coldways", with pulsing bass and a swirl of electric guitar, declaimed by the dual vocals in chorus. Belonging instead to the record's finer material are the enchanted serenade of "You Must Build a Fire", built on acoustic guitar and slide counterpoint, the heartfelt, tense "Andalucia", with its killer stride (which recalls Bachmann's rock-band roots to everyone) before dissolving into the chorus, and the closing piano ballad that is the title track. With a dozen years of career and a dozen albums behind him, Bachmann proves he still possesses genuine inspiration, and for that he deserves real credit.

Unfortunately, "Dignity and Shame" isn't an innovative or "new" record — quite the opposite, it sits rather far from the current musical landscape, and this condemns it (at least here in Italy, where the tradition this record belongs to is hardly rooted) to being forgotten. A real shame.

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30/04/2026