The new Eric Bachmann
Self-titled solo release offers fresh sounds from a familiar voice.
Photo credit: Jeremy Lange
ric Bachmann’s voice makes a deep gravelly sound. He used it with guttural force in the ’90s as the frontman of sharp-tongued indie rockers Archers of Loaf. In the 2000s, his delivery mellowed but his voice stayed low and coarse to croon Crooked Fingers tunes. After two-plus decades making music, his rough-around-the-edges style has become a familiar signature.
Bachmann’s voice is also tinged with a Southern accent, a trait that’s not quite detectable in his singing but possible to pick up on in conversation. It surprised me a little when I heard it in our recent phone conversation, although I suppose it shouldn’t have. Bachmann is from North Carolina and has spent the last few years living in Athens, Georgia. Still, hearing it offered a new perspective on something so seemingly familiar. The same could be said for Bachmann’s new self-titled solo album. From his seat at the piano, the singer/songwriter gets deeply personal on Eric Bachmann as he wrestles with anxiety, intolerance, and the politics of family and place.
“I think the South is toxic. I’ve never, and I’ll get in trouble with this, but I’ve never been enamored with any of it,” Bachmann says, voicing frustration about the death penalty, anti-LGBT laws, and confederate flag supporters.
Such blunt talk is characteristic of his new album.
“Masters of the Deal” opens with glittering guitars “at the scene of the slow crime of the century” and delivers an indictment of capital punishment: “What should be an old relic by now should never have been/The South is a ghost/A ghost is a lie/Harassing the roads and haunting the pines.”
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“Mercy” is a doo-wopping Trojan horse disguising Bachmann’s realist anthem about loving family despite “the batshit crazy things they say.” The song “was so personal in terms of my family and my life that I had to find a deceitful way to lure people that I’m talking to in,” Bachmann says.
“Separation Fright” starts cool enough with a series of soothing “oooooos” before Bachmann interjects, “Oh no, I got a bad feeling/Agoraphobia and anxiety has got my mad heart reeling,” his frenzied voice pushing the panicked words out higher and faster. The song “Dreaming” offers a calming antidote as collaborator and wife Liz Durrett repeats the achingly lovely refrain, “Hey Love, don’t turn on me now/I was gonna fight for you.” The song, Bachmann says, is a gentle exchange between a mother and child that considers the boundless but short-lived possibilities of youth.
Bachmann, now in his forties, says over the years his inspiration “has changed constantly. I think you can’t be taking from the same thing all the time. … I’m always trying to find new perspectives to write from.”
For Eric Bachmann he didn’t have to look far. The result is an honest and energized record full of fresh sounds from a familiar voice.
Eric Bachmann plays Eddie’s Attic on Fri., July 8. With Skylar Gudasz, $15. 8 p.m. Eddie’s Attic, 515-B North McDonough St., Decatur. 404-377-4976. eddiesattic.com.