Proving Robert Christgau Wrong

As I trudged out the door of work at 7 p.m., a co-worker inquired about my plans for the evening. With a grimace, I said that I was heading to a Crooked Fingers concert. On any other night a show would have thrilled me, but April 13th had been endless, I was tired, and Robert Christgau (the dean of rock criticism, whom I respect greatly) had indicated that Crooked Fingers is "sometimes harrowing, sometimes boring" in his preview in the Village Voice. I was in no mood for a crapshoot.

An hour later, I walked down the steps of the Village Underground into its thoroughly not-conducive-to-performance performance space. Omaha's May Day Pigeon, made up of singer/guitarist Ted Stevens (of Lullaby for the Working Class and Cursive) and drummer/guitarist Patrick Oaks sat in chairs on the stage. Stevens' fantastic voice conveyed barrels of emotion in a sensitive blend of vocal forcefulness and near whispers even though the sparsely filled audience was unfamiliar with the songs. Stevens and Oaks played a fine set of quiet rock music that sounded like a substantially stripped down version of the folk/orchestral arrangements of Lullaby for the Working Class.

May Day Pigeon's quiet set flowed nicely into Azure Ray's lulling, ethereal guitar, sample, keyboard, and voice arrangements. Drawing mainly from its debut self-titled album (Warm, 2000), vocalists/guitarists Orenda Fink and Maria Taylor blended their pure voices to paint sauntering soundscapes of desire and loss. "Sleep" emerged as a standout in the band's set because of its poppy immediacy in the live setting.

Despite pleasant first two bands, I remained weary until the arrival of Crooked Fingers. Maybe lead singer/songwriter/guitarist and sometime banjo player Eric Bachmann (Archers of Loaf) read Robert Christgau's not-so-kind words and wanted to prove him wrong. Probably not, but the band's performance was nothing short of extraordinary.

For the first time all night, the audience stood as the three members of Crooked Fingers filled the cramped stage. By the second song, we had been captured in a web of music so intense and fantastic that there was no chance of breaking free without express permission.

"Devil's Train" (from Bring on the Snakes, Warm, 2001) ensnared the entire crowd with a chugging snare beat and up-tempo, stand-up bass line. Over top of the rocking rhythm section, Bachmann poured the smile on his face into the delivery of each cutting lyric and every plucked guitar note. The music came to life in a way that no recording could ever hope to capture.

The fantastic energy continued with songs like "Rotting Strip" when Bachmann's voice altered between a smooth alto like Semisonic's Dan Wilson and the gravely baritone of Tom Waits. The thumping snare- drum rolls gave the song a Civil War battle cry feel that added to the immediacy and intensity. They performed the finest David Bowie cover I have heard since Nirvana tried its hand at "The Man Who Sold the World."

And then, one of the most amazing events I have ever seen occurred. The three men of Crooked Fingers descended, with instruments in tow, from the platform of the stage into the middle of the crowd. Eric Bachmann was literally a foot-and-a-half away from me as his non-amplified, throaty voice sung atop of a banjo and stand-up bass.

As the band performed in a small circle surrounded by the audience, its songs sounded more like they belonged on the porch of a West Virginia coal miner's town in the 1930s than in a New York City rock club. And that is the ultimate testament to the honesty and intimacy that Crooked Fingers created, even as they morphed Prince's "When You Were Mine" into an odd concoction of the fire-and-brimstone revivalism of Jonathan Edwards and Johnny Rotten.

As I sit before my computer at 2 a.m. in an attempt to convey some of the show's greatness (before I forget it), I can honestly write that I have never been so impressed with a band's ability to turn songs that sound good on a recording into a truly spectacular stage performance. I only wish that Robert Christgau could have shared the experience.