Crooked Fingers

You don't call your record Dignity and Shame unless you intend something wholeheartedly poignant. Unfortunately, in modern music, that intention often results in songwriting that's forced or trite. But not if you're Eric Bachmann. With his latest release, the Archers of Loaf graduate has created a melancholy and intimate collection of country, folk and Latin-flavored pop songs, steeped in gentle acoustic guitars and spacious piano and teeming with heartache without ever coming off as cheesy. Bachmann sings about dying flowers, ghosts and cognac with an urgency that suggests he's either recently had his heart stomped on or he's been renting too much noir from the video store. The singer's low, froggish voice, borrowing equally from Bruce Springsteen and Tom Waits, only adds to the bleak but quaint feel of Dignity, as if the cigarettes and whiskey are by his side the whole time these elaborate, nocturnal tales unfold.