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Free Download From Crooked Fingers

• 22nd Oct 2012

Crooked Fingers featuring Archer’s of Loaf frontman, Eric Bachmann will be touring the UK this winter ahead of the release of the wonderful album Breaks in the Armor. The full length will be available in the UK for the very first time on December 4th by Merge Records who have released the opening track Typhoon today as a free download.

Eric Bachmann lives in Athens, Georgia, these days, where he recorded Breaks in the Armor at The Bakery with Matt Yelton (live sound engineer for the Pixies), enlisting the help of Liz Durrett on backing vocals. It’s a cohesive and diverse set of songs with less adorned and more direct and affecting arrangements. Beautifully understated, artfully phrased, and ultimately a paean to perseverance, the album seems to suggest that the breaks in the armor are more important than the armor itself.

In 2009, Bachmann, who writes, records, and performs songs mainly under the name Crooked Fingers, would have scoffed at the idea that he’d be releasing a new record in a few years. Or, it’s unlikely he’d have scoffed at anything, really, because he’s not the kind of guy who flounces about with words like “scoff”—“you’re full of shit” seems entirely more likely a response. Lucky for us, however he’d have described it, he would have been wrong. All of which is maybe the long way around to saying that Bachmann did what he could to prevent this new Crooked Fingers record, the first since the 2008 release of Forfeit/Fortune, from ever coming out. And again, lucky for us, he failed.

Before all that, though, from about 1991 to 1998, Bachmann, along with Eric Johnson, Matt Gentling, and Mark Price, was in the band Archers of Loaf. Sometime in 1998, right around the time Archers of Loaf decided to hang it up, The Village Voice’s Robert Christgau, in reviewing the band’s last studio album White Trash Heroes, suggested that “…other indie bands should just retire.” It’s possible they misunderstood.

These days, Eric Bachmann enjoys walks on the beach, movies (though he’s not a big horror fan), art, good food, and stimulating conversation. He can currently bench press about 240, and his personal best was somewhere in the 275–285 range. Breaks in the Armor is his sixth full-length record as Crooked Fingers (seventh if you count the Eric Bachmann one).

See Crooked Fingers play live at the following UK dates:

Supporting The Tallest Man On Earth (solo shows by Eric Bachmann)

October

23-Bristol, Colston Hall
24-Dublin, Vicar Street
25-Belfast, Mandela Hall
27-Edinburgh, HMV Picture House
28-Manchester, HMV Ritz

Shows with Horse Feathers (duo shows with Eric Bachmann and Liz Durrett)

November

19-London, The Borderline

December

5-Brighton, Sticky Mikes
6-Manchester, The Castle Hotel
7-Liverpool, Mello Mello
8-Middlesbrough, The Westgarth SC
10-Glasgow, The Art School

Crooked Fingers – Typhoon by MergeRecords