Crooked Fingers

Crooked Fingers

Dignity and Shame (Merge)

With his fifth album as the bellwether of Crooked Fingers, Eric Bachmann has put another long stretch of scorched road between himself and his former project, the Archers of Loaf. Each new album has ventured deeper into the dark corners of melancholy Americana, and Dignity and Shame is no different. Uniquely enough, it's a concept album of sorts, centered (ostensibly) around legendary Spanish bullfighter Manolete and his lover. Opener "Islero" is named for the bull that gored Manolete to death, its "voice" a trumpet, which, despite the album's Spanish setting, winds up easily mistaken for Calexico-like flourish. The concept seems to have been checked at the door, however, as the following track, "Weary Arms," is a sharp little slice of featherlight rock, an ode to a paranoid hermit with "many enemies for reasons no one's certain of." Leave it to Bachmann to couch such a dark message in such a pleasant-sounding song. The concept is picked back up on "Andalucia," with a traveling matador wistfully bidding adios to his lover. Despite his Spanish mind-set, Bachmann has composed a song cycle that's distinctly American, earthy and working class. He's aided in the vocal work by Aussie siren Lara Meyerratken, who, in a nice little bit of SXSW serendipity, also appears on Ben Lee's current album; their chemistry is remarkable. While the concept fails to stand up over the album's narrative arc, the songwriting is solid as ever, and Bachmann and Meyerratken's combined voices will soothe even the angriest beast. (Thursday, March 17, 12mid @ the Parish)