Bull in a China Shop
In 1947, legendary matador Manolete killed the bull Islero in the small village of Linares, Spain. And then Islero returned the favor. Manolete, a 40-year-old bullfighting god, gracefully drove his sword into Islero’s steaming flank. But Islero — for his part — was able to drive a horn into his opponent’s groin before falling dead. Manolete was carried away, gushing blood, and he died the next morning. As the tale goes, Manolete had promised his love, actress Antonita Lupe Sino, that he would retire that year. She had not been convinced, telling him that “they” would never let him go until he died.
“That’s a bold story, man,” says Eric Bachmann, the creative force behind Seattle’s Crooked Fingers and formerly of North Carolina wonderboys Archers of Loaf. “That’s a really great, tragic, timeless kind of love story. You gotta love the Spanish for that kind of thing.”
Bachmann introduces the quasi-mythical battle of Islero and Manolete to the world of indie rock on Crooked Fingers’ latest album, Dignity and Shame. Mariachi trumpets, flamenco guitar, charging drums and Bachmann’s unrestrained baritone trace the tale of love, death and bull across several tracks on the album.
The majority of the record, however, is about modern love and the dignity, the shame and the obstacles — internal and external — that keep things from working out.
“The first song that I wrote for the record — that I was definitely going to put on the record as a cohesive starting point — was ‘Dignity and Shame,'” Bachmann says. “And when I thought about that [concept], I went looking for stories and ideas that would offer good backdrops and good ideas for continuing that so there would be a cohesive theme for all the characters in all the songs.”
Bachmann’s discovery and retelling of the Manolete myth is at the center of the push-and-tug of passion and doubt that plays out with surprising fluency on the album. Although the “twilight creeps” who inhabit Bachmann’s songs of everyday life are a far cry from heroes of yore, Bachmann manages to connect the distinctly less-than-heroic situations of our neurotic age to the legendary bullring drama. After all, when it comes to love, who hasn’t been gored once or twice?
Ultimately, Dignity and Shame shows that Bachmann has grown up into a masterful (yet still rambunctious) tunesmith. The most sophisticated moments on the album occur in Bachmann’s duets with Australian singer Lara Meyerratken, which create a clever dialogue on “Call to Love” and “Sleep All Summer.”
“I wanted to inject more femininity into it, so I specifically wrote duets for this record for that reason,” Bachmann says. “How do you get more femininity onto a record, I thought. Well, you should probably get a girl to sing.”
To that we say, Olé!
