On his soundtrack, Short Careers, Bachmann skillfully winds through moods—presumably following the plot, considering song titles like "Jimmy The Enforcer" and "The Mysterious Death Of Robert Tower"—creating pieces that tell a story even without words or an accompanying film. He follows soundtrack protocol by running variations on musical themes: A charging string section pops up several times to play the same melody line.

What Bachmann had done is indeed impressive. To go from indie-rock noise maker to soundtrack scorer is no easy task, yet Bachmann has done it. Musically this is light years beyond anything he's ever done, displaying a coherency and vision that he never even winked at on past endeavors. The vision and ability to convey a wide range of emotions are not even in the same continent as what he's done.

Which brings us to Bachmann's latest incarnation: movie soundtracker. Ball of Wax is an independent film by Daniel Kraus. From what I can tell, the movie has something to do with an awesome baseball player (in the mold of Cal Ripken) who is bored with his life and convinces his teammates to compete in contests of a vile and depraved nature, while promising the winners power, respect and money.

The feeling of the soundtrack overall seems to evoke sadness, loss and death, and makes me curious to see what the film is actually about. Once again, Eric Bachmann defies musical definition, constantly changing as he did before and now he can add soundtrack composer to his resume.

Eric Bachmann’s Short Careers, as the subtitle states, the score for "Ball of Wax" is as direct as its name. Bachmann, the front man/singer for the briefly beloved Chapel Hill noiseniks the Archers of Loaf— and currently the man behind the fragile, frequently beautiful barstool laments of Crooked Fingers— composed these 12 instrumentals that weave between typical incidental fare, rich orchestration, and understated beauty.

The stilted lilt of "Good Morning Sleepyhead" is worth the asking price, a cartoon-triumphant march that suggests colossal innocence. When the track erupts into crowd noise, its significance as a wordless entity manifests. Only the brief "Nosebleed" is equally Fingular. The rest reveals another side of Bachmann, replete with ominous pianos and icily melodramatic strings.

Blending elements of pop, orchestral, and soundtrack, Bachmann creates a tension building, thrill ride soundtrack. An exciting, breathtaking composition of lush, fragile, and weepy numbers, songs that make you believe you understand the plot of the movie and its dialogue...

Writing and recording an original score for a movie about baseball, greed and madness might seem difficult, but Eric Bachmann (Archers Of Loaf, Crooked Fingers) rose to the challenge and triumphed. After years of fronting great (but under-rated) indie rock acts, Bachmann agreed to produce a creepy soundtrack for an even creepier movie.

After the Archers broke up in 1998 ("It became work, so we knew it was time to quit," says Bachmann), the whiskey-soaked wakes and lo-fi laments of Bachmann's current band, Crooked Fingers, became his focus. And this week, Bachmann, who now resides in the Atlanta area, releases his first CD to bear his own name -- Short Careers: Original Score for the Film Ball of Wax.

You've enjoyed his work as frontman for Archers of Loaf, his experimental compositions under the alias Barry Black and his solo releases as Crooked Fingers. Now, singer-songwriter Eric Bachmann has turned his talents to soundtrack work.

Eric Bachmann, the brains behind such rock and experimental acts such as The Archers of Loaf, Barry Black and his current project, Crooked Fingers, released this original score for the Daniel Kraus film, Ball of Wax.

The album, Short Careers: Original Soundtrack to the film Ball of Wax, combines stark chamber compositions with less traditional musical elements such as Russian balalaikas (a stringed instrument), toy music boxes, guitar loops and Hoover vacuum cleaners. It's already been getting good reviews

A major flaw in most modern soundtracks is their propensity to utilize pop music with catchy lyrics to establish character or theme, a device that backfires when the audience identifies more with the song than with its place in the film. While there are exceptions (Quentin Tarantino and Guy Ritchie come to mind), most directors use well-known songs as a narrative crutch (see "I'm a Believer" as redone by Smashmouth for Shrek) -- a "cop-out" to get the audience singing along or tapping their feet to the familiar tune, oblivious of the numerous plot holes being smoke-screened right in front of them. On Short Careers, Bachmann crafts songs that are necessarily brief yet multifaceted, capable of conveying conflicting emotions in a relatively small capsule of time.