Forfeit / Fortune

Crooked Fingers fans who enjoyed Eric Bachmann's 2006, bare-bones acoustic To the Races LP, yet yearned for the kind of heavily orchestrated, E Street Band-fueled Americana that graced 2003's Red Devil Dawn and 2005's Dignity and Shame, will no doubt be pleased by Forfeit/Fortune. Picking right up where Shame left off, Bachmann, along with an all-star cast of characters which includes longtime collaborators as well as indie rock stalwarts like Brian Kotzur (Silver Jews), Tom Hagerman (DeVotchKa), and Neko Case blow through an 11-song set of dusty, horn-laden, highway driving, drink-spilling heartache that stands as the group's most solid piece of work to date. Opener "What Never Comes," a fully loaded showstopper that comes on like a cross between David Bowie's "Heroes" and Bruce Springsteen's "Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out," sets the pace, and from there it's an unusually wild ride from a bandleader who often favors straight-to-tape authenticity over studio experimentation. Funky instrumentation and wild percussion abound throughout, especially on the cool and visceral "Luisa's Bones," an old-timey tale filtered through a digital water bag. "Cannibals," a straight-up power pop nugget that could have peen peeled off the back of the first Cheap Trick album, also impresses, but it's Forfeit/Fortune's final two tracks, the mesmerizing, anthem worthy "Modern Dislocation" and its equally rousing counterpart "Your Control" — the latter a duet with Neko Case — that seal the deal.