It’s always been difficult to pinpoint where Crooked Fingers ends and Eric Bachmann begins. And that’s pretty much by design. A quarter century later, what began as a necessary offramp in the wake of Archer Of Loaf’s 1998 breakup has evolved fitfully into an intriguing forum for Bachmann’s more theatrical forays into self-analysis. One thing’s for certain: Swet Deth (Merge) feels like an album 15 years removed from the last Crooked Fingers LP. (Which it is.) Though the title rightly implies a fixation on mortality, the music’s effervescent vibe and artful arrangements convey a mood that’s almost light. It’s like an existential load has been lifted, and we’re the beneficiaries of a new-found clarity—perhaps prompted by a recent health crisis. (More on that below.)
As if to drive home that realization, Bachmann orchestrated a concept around a series of drawings by his son. In one, a healthy tree emerges from a dire tableau of crows, tombstones and sinister figures with scythes. On another, he’d written, “Deth, Swet Deth.” Bachmann initially approached Swet Deth as a follow-up to his 2018 solo release, No Recover. But as he fleshed out the songs, they seemed to demand the collaborative “heaviness” of a Crooked Fingers release. He brought in drummer Jeremy Wheatley, later expanding the guest list with high-profile names like Sharon Van Etten, the National’s Matt Berninger and Superchunk’s Mac McCaughan. Other contributors include his wife, Liz Durrett, and pedal-steel ace Jon Rauhouse, as well as Skylar Gudasz and Avery Leigh Draut, both members of his touring band.
Bachmann digs into each track below.
—Hobart Rowland
1) “Cold Waves” (Featuring Mac McCaughan)
“I dreamed of a beautiful, colossal, six-winged inamorata rising off the horizon above the ashes of the dying earth. Arctic lasers were pulsating from her eyes and fire streamed from her fingertips, freezing, then melting, then freezing everything again in an instant—lighting up the night with death and apocalypse, destroying everything in her path. When I woke, I realized I’d fallen deeply in love with her but was worried that it was actually a trap—which, in hindsight, it clearly was.”
2) “From All Ways” (Featuring Matt Berninger)
“I had CBT during COVID, and it helped me tremendously. My sessions were done via telehealth, so I never saw what my therapist actually looked like. I have a recurring dream that my therapist looks like Grimace, the McDonald’s character from the ’70s—except he was reddish orange, not purple. This benevolent creature was not only helping me organize the thoughts and memories in my brain to reduce the chaos and anxiety. He was also physically keeping me from putting a bullet in my head by bearhugging me and slamming me onto the chaise lounge over and over again, all while listening to me go on and on about my childhood or whatever. This song is about all of that. Matt was kind enough to play this therapy monster in my little song’s story. Thanks, Matt.”
3) “Spray Tan Speed Queen (In A German Car)” (Featuring Skylar Gudasz)
“I played a promotional thing at a hotel in Las Vegas near the airport once back in 2007 or so. It was at the swimming pool. Three sets in the hot Las Vegas sun. No one knew me or my music. It was probably the worst live-performing experience of my life. After I finished, I drove north up the Strip to my shitty hotel off the I-15 near I-11. I was stopped at a traffic light when a black Mercedes SUV pulls up with two bikini-clad escorts sticking out of the sunroof. I felt pretty humiliated from the horrible shows back at the hotel, so I didn’t really want to engage. I was sweaty and smoking a cigarette, feeling pretty misanthropic—until one of them yelled over, “Hey! How’s your night going?” “All right,” I mumbled. “Well, hang in there, cutie,” she flirted as the light turned green and they drove off into the arid night. It was the kindest transaction of my day, so I wrote this bizarre love song to her out of gratitude.”
4) “Insomnia”
“I had a heart attack back in October. The doctor says it partly happened because I didn’t get enough sleep over the years. Insomnia is something I’ve dealt with for as long as I can remember. It feels like if I fall asleep, I might miss something. I wrote this song about it. The plucky, winding guitar part that enters after the first verse represents a little venomous snake, dancing in slithers through a pile of unknowing victims slumbering on the beach in the tropical moonlight. I’m in love with the shimmering line of light the moon makes against the ocean when you’re on the beach late at night.”
5) “Empty Love And Cheap Thrills” (Featuring Avery Leigh Draut)
“Living in swampy Georgia, I romanticize the desert. One of my favorite aspects of touring is driving through it. The song itself tangles in the trap of returning again and again to an ex-girlfriend for sex even though the relationship is a dysfunctional dead end. It was originally called ‘Sex With The Ex.’ If I’d been an EDM artist, I probably would’ve kept that title.”
6) “Haunted” (Featuring Sharon Van Etten)
“This song has my favorite lyric from the album: ‘You were so angry when you fed me that poison/If you were sorry, you could make it all end/But you won’t.’ Murder, romance, intrigue … so dramatic. I’m also so grateful to SVE for singing this with me. I was too shy to ask her, but friends convinced me. I’m so glad she said yes.”
7) “Hospital” (Featuring Liz Durrett)
“This was the first song out of the 10 that I finished for what would become Swet Deth. Prescient. I didn’t know I was going to have a heart attack. I didn’t know I was going to be ambulanced to the hospital a few months after recording it. I didn’t see it coming at all. But this is how the songs you are writing try to communicate with you. It was trying to tell me to eat better, sleep better and drink less. Did I listen? Apparently I did not.”
8) “(I’m Your) Bodhisattva” (Featuring Skylar Gudasz)
“I don’t know Renee-Louise Carafice very well, but we toured together in New Zealand in 2005-2006 for about a week and got along well. She played this song of hers every night, and I loved it every time. I loved it so much I decided to cover it. The cover turned out well enough, so I put it on the record. Thanks to Skylar singing it with me.”
9) “Lena”
“Lena is my grandmother’s name, but the song has little to do with her. I just love the sound of her name. I’m not a gambler, but I do like to stop at interstate casinos from time to time on tour to use the clean(ish) restrooms and get a free soft drink from the complimentary drink fountains many of them have. They’re also safe places to park overnight if you need a free place to sleep. I learned this trick early on while touring because we were always low on cash. The most fascinating part of these visits was observing the retired old folks shoving their social security checks into slot machines while chain-smoking cigarettes. The characters in this song are culled from that image. My grandmother chain-smoked, too, so maybe there’s that connection to why I titled the song after her.”
10) “Steady Now”
“I wanted to write a song whose narrator was falling violently in real time from high in the sky but had achieved a state of calm and resignation in his mind as he approached the surface of the earth, knowing that the impact would be his end. As I edited and re-wrote it over and over, it evolved into what you hear here, which is more of a note you might leave for your child to find after you pass away.”
