Eric Bachmann lives in Athens, Georgia, these days, where he recorded Breaks in the Armor at The Bakery with Matt Yelton (live sound engineer for the Pixies) throughout the winter of 2010/2011, enlisting the help of Liz Durrett on backing vocals. It's a cohesive and diverse set of songs with less adorned and more direct and affecting arrangements. Beautifully understated, artfully phrased, and ultimately a paean to perseverance, the album seems to suggest that the breaks in the armor are more important than the armor itself.
"You come and go alone / You don't stand a chance"
That's from the track "Went to the City" from Breaks in the Armor, and though, short of directly asking him (which, in narrowing the possibilities, would sort of ruin the fun), there's really, and happily, no telling what the precise, intended meaning of that line is, it does get at what Bachmann found missing and has rediscovered. There's an undeniable sense of community he's regained in returning to writing and performing as Crooked Fingers, working with Archers of Loaf and Merge Records again, and moving back to the southeast. In 2011, Archers of Loaf reunited, toured the US, and played on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, and with the August 2011 reissue of their debut album Icky Mettle, Merge will begin a series of expanded re-mastered reissues of the band's four studio albums. Over the course of the coming year, Bachmann will alternate between touring as Crooked Fingers and with Archers of Loaf, making the most of two distinct and rewarding modes of expression and performance. All of which seems to be exactly where he should be again.
You come and go alone, and it's in between these things where you find the people and experiences and art that matter, that make the difference. You don't stand a chance, but that's exactly why you should try, right?
Eric Bachmann enjoys walks on the beach, movies (though he's not a big horror fan), art, good food, and stimulating conversation. He can currently bench press about 240, and his personal best was somewhere in the 275-285 range. Breaks in the Armor is his sixth full-length record as Crooked Fingers (seventh if you count the Eric Bachmann one).

The newest entry into John Vanderslice's deep and undeniably remarkable catalog is White Wilderness, and it's a record like no other he's made before.

Here are nine new and wildly impressive JV songs captured live over three days in a unique collaboration with the Magik*Magik Orchestra, a collective of classically trained musicians in the Bay Area led by artistic director Minna Choi.

Did you catch that? Recorded live in three days! Never in his long career of super-smart pop songwriting paired with masterful recording and production has JV shed his reliance on hours and hours of agonizing studio wizardry. Never before has he passed up the chance to tweak and twist endlessly in mixing. For this album, all that went away. It's simply a room full of friends playing music.

The Magik*Magik Orchestra have a comprehensive mastery of classic performance and repertoire, but also have a full appreciation of the aesthetics of indie and underground music. Choi arranged and conducted White Wilderness with 19 members of the Magik*Magik playing strings and horns, vibraphone, pedal steel and piano, an assortment of reed instruments, and much to JV's benefit, the voice of Minna Choi singing backup at key moments throughout the album.

Recorded in San Francisco, White Wilderness was produced by John Congleton, whose resume includes albums by St Vincent, The Walkmen, Explosions in the Sky, Bill Callahan and many more.
The results are stunning, and White Wilderness is a breath of fresh air for JV, as well as a great stake in the ground for his career of making stellar records.