| Allmusic |
 Crooked Fingers fans who enjoyed Eric Bachmann's 2006, bare-bones acoustic To the Races LP, yet yearned for the kind of heavily orchestrated, E Street Band-fueled Americana that graced 2003's Red Devil Dawn and 2005's Dignity and Shame, will no doubt be pleased by Forfeit/Fortune. Picking right up where Shame left off, Bachmann, along with an all-star cast of characters which includes longtime collaborators as well as indie rock stalwarts like Brian Kotzur (Silver Jews), Tom Hagerman (DeVotchKa), and Neko Case blow through an 11-song set of dusty, horn-laden, highway driving, drink-spilling heartache that stands as the group's most solid piece of work to date. Opener "What Never Comes," a fully loaded showstopper that comes on like a cross between David Bowie's "Heroes" and Bruce Springsteen's "Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out," sets the pace, and from there it's an unusually wild ride from a bandleader who often favors straight-to-tape authenticity over studio experimentation. Funky instrumentation and wild percussion abound throughout, especially on the cool and visceral "Luisa's Bones," an old-timey tale filtered through a digital water bag. "Cannibals," a straight-up power pop nugget that could have peen peeled off the back of the first Cheap Trick album, also impresses, but it's Forfeit/Fortune's final two tracks, the mesmerizing, anthem worthy "Modern Dislocation" and its equally rousing counterpart "Your Control" -- the latter a duet with Neko Case -- that seal the deal....full text |
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| Spin |
| Former Archers of Loaf frontman Eric Bachmann has led the folksier Crooked Fingers for nearly a decade, but he still operates in the shadow of his semi-seminal indie-rock outfit, due to an inconsistency that also plagues Forfeit/Fortune. Magisterial opener "What Never Comes" folds an aching, Southern-accented melody into beautifully Bowie-esque chord changes, but it's nine tracks later before Bachmann and Co. deliver anything comparable. That would be the sublime "Modern Dislocation" -- which gives its indie buzz an epic Springsteen sweep -- and closing track "Your Control," a gorgeous, synth-swept rocker on which Bachmann is joined by Neko Case....full text |
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| Pitchfork |
Self-releasing may be a viable revenue model for already massive sellers like Radiohead and Trent Reznor, but the jury's still out on whether forgoing record label patronage can keep smaller artists in subsistence rations, let alone support a rock'n'roll lifestyle. Last we heard from Eric Bachmann-- in 2006, when he released the lyrically grim (even by his misery-loving standards) solo record To the Races-- the guy was living out of his van. By choice, according to the musician, but still. So despite culling a decent following over the course of four solid Crooked Fingers full-lengths and a superlative covers EP-- and shored-up by a road warrior work ethic-- Bachmann's decision to hawk this one himself is somewhat risky.
He's made Fortfeit/Fortune available in four formats via his website and also through iTunes and two dozen hand-picked independent brick & mortars. So fans who only spend their dollars at the Walton family company store and other mom-and-pop-crushing big boxes are out of luck. (Buy independent, y'all!) There are no hard feelings between Bachmann and recent Crooked Fingers label Merge (a relief, because if you can't count on Merge to do right by artists, hardened skeptics and rabid new paradigm types are right, and labels really are obsolete). Though even a savvy indie with a battalion of crack publicists might not know how to sell this oversalted stew. Typically corralled into the Americana pen, Crooked Fingers has for some time owed more to Iberian (and more recently, Eastern European) folk, contemporary Anglo-American singer/songwriter conventions, and punk rock, than Appalachian ballads, Nashville, or Neil Young. And on previous album, 2005's Dignity and Shame, the loosely cobbled band's strange brew went down reasonably well....full text |
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