Crooked Fingers – Swet Deth LP

Description

RELEASE DATE: 2/27/2026

One afternoon, Eric Bachmann’s son returned from school with a sheath of pictures he’d drawn, all of them macabre. “There were crows and sinisterfigures with scythes and tombstones,” he recalls. On one, he had written‘DETH, SWET DETH,’ and everything clicked in my head.” Swet Deth,Bachmann’s first album under his Crooked Fingers moniker after a 15-yearhiatus, organized itself around the image: it’s songs are about death, yes, butthere’s a sweetness to them, a wry sensibility to his lyrics that comes fromhaving experienced many kinds of death and the life that follows in it’s wake.“Crooked Fingers” is a historically slippery concept – no two albumssound alike or feature the same lineup in studio or on tour. Hearing parts inthese songs that called for instruments he didn’t play or vocals that weren’tin his register, he found himself expanding the roster of guest musiciansfurther than he had on any album in his catalog, including Sharon Van Etten(“Haunted”), The National’s Matt Berninger (“From All Ways”), andSuperchunk’s Mac McCaughan (“Cold Waves”). But first he started withfamily, friends, and frequent collaborators. Jon Rauhouse plays pedal steel.Bachmann’s wife, Liz Durrett, contributes vocals, as do members of histouring band, Skylar Gudasz and Avery Leigh Draut (of Night Palace).There is a freedom to this collection of songs, a groove to them that wouldbelie their agonies and anxieties were mere death the album’s point and notwhat comes before. For Eric Bachmann, that has been growth, as a musicianand as a man. Like the tree sprouting from the graveyard on it’s cover, SwetDeth is surprising and lush, a shock of color against it’s morbid landscape,proof of life in the shadow of it’s opposite. “RIP Eric Bachmann,” onetombstone reads. As Crooked Fingers, he’s never felt more alive.