Eric Bachmann has taken his music in many directions — few of them lucrative, all of them compelling. His group Archers of Loaf dominated college radio through much of the '90s, and after that band's demise, he formed the similarly beloved Crooked Fingers, which has played everything from craggy solo folk music to surprisingly sunny and full-blooded rock. In 2006, Bachmann released a brilliant solo record, To the Races, which he recorded during a summer spent living in his van. (So, yeah: Not terribly lucrative.)
The new Crooked Fingers record, Forfeit/Fortune, finds Bachmann returning to sonically ambitious pop-rock blowouts, complete with horn and string arrangements he wrote himself. For a singer who's spent years honing his weary, Neil Diamond-esque croak, Bachmann seems to be having something approximating fun here: In "Cannibals," he immerses his voice in an arrangement that positively sparkles with chiming guitars and sunny harmonies. He may be singing about "cannibals loose in the street," but the song itself makes the process of being eaten alive sound positively enticing.
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