Crooked Fingers
Bring on the Snakes
[Warm/Touch and Go]
Rating: 6.2
How long should an artist wait between full-length releases? Should
prolificacy be an unconditionally celebrated trait, or should some
consideration be paid to audience fatigue? I don't have any hard statistics
on this, but I'd guess that the average wait between any two full-length
releases is about a year and a half. It's a long enough period of time to
allow one album's hype to grow and fade out, and give the fans a bit of a
breather before having something new hoisted on them. It's also probably
beneficial to the artist, since it gives them some time to fully develop
ideas and visions for the next album. I mention this because Bring on the
Snakes has come along only thirteen months after the release of Crooked
Fingers' eponymous debut, which has yet to leave my stereo's heavy rotation.
And regardless of a desire to be fair toward it, the album still feels like
afterbirth of its predecessor, a shrugged-shouldered sophomore slump.
Eric Bachmann, the main creative force behind Crooked Fingers, has a proven
track record of continuing musical experimentation; as part of the Archers of
Loaf and Barry Black, he attempted to develop a different facet of his sound
on each album. He certainly wasn't always successful, but there's something
to be said for the effort. The first Crooked Fingers album, an outgrowth of
Barry Black's expanded arrangements, combined with further refinements of
Bachmann's curmudgeonly lyrical outlook, was just varied enough to avoid
criticism of being repetitive. But Bachmann was clearly treading on thin ice,
and with Bring on the Snakes, he falls right through.
The saving grace of Crooked Fingers was the small group of friends
Bachmann assembled for recording, who provided much-needed instrumental
variation between songs. On Bring on the Snakes, however, Bachmann
goes it alone, sticking with a steady stream of fingerpicked guitar, droning
tones, and sparse percussion. Less interesting arrangements combined with less
focused lyrics turn the album into one long, generic Crooked Fingers track,
laying bare the slightness of Bachmann's songwriting formula.
To be fair, there are some minor differences between the two Crooked Fingers
albums, but they're far outweighed by the similarities. "The Rotting Strip"
clatters along with Magnetic Fields-like toy-synth noise, and near-optimistic
lyrics, a first for Bachmann: "[We] crossed our hearts half-hoping/ That we
could both quit smoking/ And kick the booze and blow/ And one day go make
something of ourselves." His characters-- usually broken-down, self-destructive
drunks haunted by devils and lost in crowds of strangers-- have started to
think that there may be a way out of their hopeless lives after all; but it's
really only a minor development that gets folded into the larger lyrical
picture, which is still rife with decay and decimation to the point of
tedium.
So while Bachmann's lyrical ideas and melodies creep forward ever so slightly,
the only thing to take solace in is the occasional odd atmospheric noise or
unintentional musical reference. The fingerpicking on "Devil's Train" strongly
recalls Jim O'Rourke's Bad Timing; "Doctors of Deliverance" is propelled
by an oddly clean electronic pulse; and the title track features the subtle
ticking of a clock, or perhaps the clip-clop of a horse's hooves, to keep
time. When it comes down to it, though, Bring on the Snakes remains
Eric Bachmann's first album that doesn't exhibit a significant musical
development. Had more time been allotted to experiment with other techniques,
or even to just develop the songs, it's conceivable that something better
might have come out of it. I guess we'll never know.
-Nick Mirov