Crooked Fingers - Reservoir Songs EP
(Merge)
After a disappointing sophomore album, Eric Bachmann's Crooked Fingers' latest release is five song EP of covers. The cover album is often maligned as it seems to be either a symptom of severe writer's block (Cat Power), laziness (Cat Power), or greed (Cat Power). However, in the right hands, the cover album can be a treat, or at least a pleasant departure, letting the artist show their love for a song written by someone else's hand.
Bachmann's Reservoir Songs EP is a worthwhile collection of covers, giving five songs a Crooked Fingers-ization, i.e., giving the songs a folk sound accented by subtle orchestration. The five Reservoir Songs fit into two categories: songs previously covered by Johnny Cash and songs released in 1980/1981. Cash seems like an easy target for Bachmann, as Cash's battle with addiction seems to serve as a template for the struggle Bachmann has cronicled in his past two Crooked Fingers albums. For the other three songs, do your own math to determine what high point in Bachmann's life happened in 1980/1981, but likely this is around the time he first decided music would be a significant part of his life.
The first Cash cover covered by Bachmann is "Sunday Morning Coming Down," written by Kris Kristofferson (note Kristoffeson's version has no g's in the title). While Kristofferson's film career has somewhat overshadowed his music career (Blade I, Blade II, Big Top Pee-Wee, etc.), "Sunday Morning Coming Down" (as well as Joplin's rendition of "Me and Bobby McGee") show Kristofferson was at one time a great songwriter and that, for a while at least, country music was a hell of a lot more punk than rock and roll music was. The song is a vivid depiction of drug-induced desolation, as the two worlds of "Sunday Morning" are juxtaposed: the drunk making his way home for the "night" and the family going to church in their Sunday best. Anyone who has listened to Bring on the Snakes will see the direct parallels to Bachmann's own words, and while Bachmann's vocals aren't as fragile or desperate as the words are, the soft, organ-filled orchestration sets the tone of the song.
The other Cash cover cover is a more recent one, "Solitary Man," originally by Neil Diamond. The song has much in common—believe it or not—with the Prince cover on the EP, "When U Were Mine," as both are hymns for the calloused man. "Solitary Man" is the song written two months after "When U Were Mine," or perhaps it's the other way around. "When U Were Mine" is the result of following the "if you love something set it free" philosophy as Prince finds that a lover's tryst has caused a permanent break, and he, in very un-Prince-like fashion, harbors many feelings. In "Solitary Man," memories of lost love have become bitter as Bachmann via Cash (via Diamond) sings of how he has decided it is better to stand alone than to deal with women "who play games behind me." The Prince cover is perhaps the standout track as it is the sparsest song on the EP, but it also comes off as the barest song emotionally, taking the original Prince song and turning it upside down so that all that is left is feeling.
The last two covers are less successful. Just as it's hard to imagine Bachmann not covering Johnny Cash in one form or another, it's hard to imagine him not covering Bruce Springsteen. For this EP, Bachmann and company perform The Boss' blue collar tale of lost youth "The River." The orchestration and arrangement work well, with echoey effects that create a sullen atmosphere. However, the rendition does not seem very heartfelt; the inclusion of this song is not about "The River," it is just a tribute to The Boss. The last song on the EP is a cover of Vanilla Ice's "Ice Ice Baby." To-to-to the extreme... word to your mother. No, wait, it is a cover of the Bowie/Queen teaming of "Under Pressure" (the riff of which was plundered by Mr. Ice or rather that guy who knew Suge Knight who wrote the song for Mr. Ice). It's hard to screw up the change at the end of the song when it switches from a quiet solitary voice to a driving anthem, and Bachmann doesn't screw it up. However, the song seems too small in sound compared to the original, the only place on the EP where giving a song the Crooked Fingers treatment doesn't work out. Perhaps in an encore set at a live show, this song would close the night well, but the recording sounds a little flat.
While you could say many (if not all) of these Reservoir Songs are overdone, these five covers say a lot about where his music is coming from, showing what has inspired him and adding insight to the words and themes of his other works.
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