Following Archers of Loaf and Bachmann’s post-Archers solo project Crooked Fingers, Eric Bachman returned with a candid new sound.

Where Archers had attitude and guitar-driven intensity, Eric Bachmann has vulnerability, led by piano, rich vocal harmonies, and Bachmann’s hard-won liberty to lay himself bare. “There is less of an externalized character to be responsible to,” says Bachmann, referring to the sardonic smart-ass who narrated the Archers’ music, or the gossiping storyteller at the helm of Crooked Fingers. “When I think about why I am compelled to put my own name on a thing as a proper title now, all of these various perspectives feel unnecessary.”

“My wandering lifestyle has presented only one nugget of clarity in my life: that places do not offer a sense of home for me. People do,” says Bachmann of the ideas that guide him in this new era of his career.