Wednesday, February 13, 2013

Crooked Fingers - "Sleep All Summer"/"You Must Build a Fire" 7"


Crooked Fingers – “Sleep All Summer”/"You Must Build a Fire" 7”
Eastern Fiction, 2005
Acquired: Love Garden, Used, 2009
Price: $5

“Sleep All Summer” is easily my favorite Crooked Fingers song. But then again, that’s oftentimes how it is when you hear a song that leads you into the open arms of a new band. The version I fell in love with was different from this one, though, which caught me way off guard when I spun this 7” for the first time. This one’s more hushed, more lovely. It’s quieter and lets every line cut right into you. The one that always kills me is “I could change for you but babe that doesn’t mean I’m going to be a better man.” No matter how Eric Bachmann sings that one it’s gonna kill me. This song’s so good St. Vincent and the National covered it together for Merge’s 20 year anniversary covers compilation. It’s definitely different from the version on Dignity and Shame. The version here sounds like it was recorded in a church. Oh wait, it was! So says the back of the sleeve. Hell, Bachmann could record this song on a damn toy piano at a noisy daycare and it would still be amazing. The b-side “You Must Build a Fire” is a more solo-oriented affair and it’s so damn fantastic I wish it weren’t recorded on MiniDisc and instead properly engineered because the vocals clip and it still sounds awesome but mostly because of the ambience and the emotion. “Sleep All Summer” suffers the same poor-recording-but-not-in-an-endearing-way quality, but again, these tunes are so good they’d sound amazing on disintegrating tape.

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