Richard Buckner
Don't know why this feels so appropriate around X-Mas. Is it the "Holiday Blues"? Whatever it may be, Richard Buckner is probably one of the best "singer-songwriters" veering towards the alt-country vein. There is an incredible amount of passion, heartache and beauty in every note he sings. If you pick one, I highly recommend Devotion + Doubt, one of the finest albums of the 1990's.
Richard Buckner / Bloomed
Released 1994
Buckner's debut is an accomplished but subdued affair with hardly a trace of rock in sight. The emphasis is on his rich-but-weary vocals and sober tales of romance and restlessness, with dignified Texas prairie backup by such esteemed regionals as Lloyd Maines (who produced) and Ponty Bon. Very much in the vein of Butch Hancock, but much more ordinary at this point, without the eccentricity and boisterousness that characterizes much of Hancock and fellow Lubbockite Terry Allen's work. - All Music Guide
Richard Buckner / Devotion + Doubt
Released 03.11.1997
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Richard Buckner's second album of cross-country folk is an exploration of love's paranoia and its resulting desperation and hopelessness. Stemming from the singer/songwriter's divorce, the 13 songs on Devotion + Doubt reflect and, to a lesser degree, celebrate both his newfound independence and loneliness. His road-weary voice (often calmed to a whisper here) coupled with the sparing strums of his acoustic guitar, strike a point of intimacy within the songs, giving the best of them ("Pull," "4am") the feeling that they were reluctantly cribbed from personal diary entries. But Buckner never sounds defeated on Devotion + Doubt, only a bit haunted, as if he's convinced himself -- based on past attempts at love and their eventual failures -- that he's destined to make the same mistakes again and again, no matter how hard he tries to make a relationship work. - All Music Guide
Released 08.11.1998
Richard Buckner's follow-up to his 1997 divorce odyssey Devotion + Doubt is a more upbeat affair, with questions of faith and being tossed into the electric mix. Moving from contemplative singer-songwriter treks ("Once") to blurry guitar rave-ups ("Believer"), Since is the picking-up-and-getting-on antidote to Devotion + Doubt's downer trip. Buckner still seems troubled by life's little hang-ups, but instead of falling into an acoustic-drenched funk, he rages against his blues with his guitar. That doesn't mean Since isn't without its distressing moments; there are plenty of hushed and fragile songs here that recall the breaking tone of his previous two albums. Yet, for all of the creeping positivity going on within the grooves, Buckner sounds more weary than ever, his already delicate voice cracking under the pressure as he trudges his way through his own brand of electric folk music. - All Music Guide
Richard Buckner / The Hill
Released 10.30.2000
Edgar Lee Masters' Spoon River Anthology, a series of poems originally published in serial form in 1914-1915, provided the subject matter for nomadic troubadour Richard Buckner's 2000 release The Hill. In the poems, the dead in an Illinois graveyard relay details from their lives in matter-of-factly haunting tones. When originally published, Masters' believable characters tore away at the strict moral facade of small-town life through their tales of adultery, casual murder, and morphine addiction. Who better than Buckner to interpret these lost souls' voices in his growling, plaintive murmur, accompanied most often by sparse acoustic guitar and stark accompaniment. Through this earthy channeler, the names from ragged gravestones almost float in front of the listener while hollowed eyes reveal the details of their own deaths.
Unfortunately, while the subject matter and the musician are an ideal match, the album as a whole falls short of Buckner's famous heartfelt intimacy and inventive songwriting. Fans who have come to appreciate his snapshot imagery and dark wordplay may be disappointed at this interpretation of someone else's work, as appropriate as it may be. The 18 individual poems are recorded as one continuous 34-minute track, making it difficult to tell when one woman's childbirth death travels into another man's drunken despair, and the warm acoustic guitar, mandolin, and violin are on occasion jarringly interrupted by misplaced electronic sweeps and buzzes. Still, the haunting charm of "Oscar Hummel" and "Emily Sparks" show the familiar passion and honesty the singer is known for. Buckner continues to distance himself from the limiting country-folk label with increasingly ambitious projects, all of which are interesting but some of which fail to fully utilize his talents. - All Music Guide
Released 2000
Richard Buckner first pressed up this low-frills, self-titled item for sale at his concerts following the 2000 release of The Hill; the self-titled disc consists of Buckner performing 11 songs armed only with his acoustic guitar in a San Francisco studio in 1996. All these songs were later re-recorded on the albums Devotion + Doubt and Since, and while listening one gets the feeling that these were really just demos cleaned up for release. That said, that's not to say these performances don't offer some surprises for fans; this version of "Boys, the Night Will Bury You" has a very different arrangement and melodic sense than the one which would appear on Since, while the more straightforward take of "Pull" gives the song a very different spin than it had on Devotion + Doubt. And anyone who has ever seen one of Buckner's solo acoustic shows knows he's a compelling and charismatic performer, and this disc manages to capture a bit of that presence on a piece of aluminum and plastic. However, none of the performances on Richard Buckner can honestly be said to be better than the studio recordings which followed. In 2003, Buckner reissued this disc in a widely available edition, which seems fitting -- while this is music worth hearing, it's too slight to merit the three-figure prices it was fetching among collectors. - All Music Guide
Richard Buckner / Impasse
Released 10.08.2002
Grizzled folkie Richard Buckner evokes more dark snapshots of life and the intricacies of relationships on his fifth release, Impasse. Similar in feel and texture to his previous releases, Impasse winds around the same moody corners, experimenting with the intimacy of the best singer/songwriters and the quirky fuzz and crunch of indie rock. The spirits of frequent collaborators Joey Burns and John Convertino linger large over this project, and after an initial listen it is surprising to find out that Buckner played all of the instruments this time around (with the exception of the drums, performed expertly by his wife, artist Penny Jo Buckner). Mellotron hums and vibraphone chimes back the singer's familiar growl and warm, nylon-stringed guitar, with textures floating past like faded slides bought from a garage sale. Landing somewhere between Since's driving experimentation and the melancholy drones of Devotion + Doubt, the album fits squarely into Buckner's catalog, but may not push too far in either direction. While Since emphasized Buckner's grit with rocked-out guitar passages and wild sonic abandon and Devotion + Doubt pushed him nearly over the edge in its soul-crushing depression and beautifully haunting themes of loss and heartbreak, Impasse finds the author seemingly more comfortable with the cards in his hand. The tension between musicians on Since and the tensions between Buckner and himself on Devotion + Doubt are subtly missing on Impasse, but this wiser and gentler Richard Buckner seems to be embracing a more even keel. With no soul-baring a cappella tracks and no glitchy rave-ups, the album seems to be painted with the same brush from start to finish, which certainly makes for a more even listen, but there is something about the contrast in his previous works that is missing here. Listening to just the first few seconds of each track, there is a discomforting similarity in the way each song starts, almost as if Buckner has worked himself into a familiar pattern and is happy working within it time and time again. Still, every song on the album is fantastic -- starkly beautiful and unusually comforting. While this collection of songs is not Buckner's best, it still is head and shoulders above 99 percent of the angst-fueled singer\songwriters out there. - All Music Guide
Richard Buckner / Impasse-ette
Released 09.10.2002
This six-song E.P. works as a combination sampler and companion piece to Richard Buckner's full-length release, Impasse. Like the full-length release, Impasse-ette contains the same churning mix of acoustic and electric sounds, sometimes breathtakingly intimate, sometimes fuzzed beyond recognition. The sampler contains acoustic versions of two songs from the album, and three previously unavailable songs. The charming and sweet "Stumble-Ette," along with "Remainder," work well as introductions -- or brief sketches -- and stand in sharp contrast to the chilling prayer "It's Still '56." None of these tracks are necessarily essential, but rabid Buckner fans will snatch it up just the same. - All Music Guide
Richard Buckner / Dents and ShellsReleased 10.12.2004
The darkness that surrounds Richard Buckner's writing always seems to be the focus of scrutiny for every judging ear, be it a professional critic's or an armchair critic's, and for good reason considering the elliptical, image-laden construction of Buckner's banter, but the constant reference to this blanket has almost unjustly glorified the artist into an impossible mystery. What isn't often mentioned is Buckner's ability to fill his music and lyrics with such a brutal and heavy heart that critics are quick to point to his lifestyle on the road, which implies a loner mentality, and his first divorce, which fueled his second album, Devotion + Doubt. When Impasse was released in late 2002, it was widely noted in the press that Buckner and his second wife, Penny Jo Buckner, were the only two musicians on the album and that, between the recording and the release of Impasse, the pair had split. The question on everyone's lips seemed to be what the follow-up would sound like and if essentially it would be Devotion + Doubt, Pt. 2. In some ways Dents and Shells treads similar ground in that it reflects some serious life change, but the impression Buckner leaves implies more a mutual understanding of why the two split rather than the paranoia that filled Devotion + Doubt. Much can be read into the lyrics of "Invitation" and "Her" -- and even, depending on how lucid one allows himself to become, the imagery of the artwork depicting two birds, one hovering above a circle and the other a square, flying in opposite directions away from a tree -- but what remains is another release that sounds how Richard Buckner has always sounded: grizzly, conceptual, fragmented, brooding, and plaintive. Dents and Shells also represents a change in Buckner's business, having moved over to Merge for this release, and back to a larger band (misery loves company?), recalling the approach to his third album, Since. The band Buckner assembled for Dents and Shells fits his standard of choosing notable musicians, the most prominent being Butthole Surfers drummer King Coffey and Meat Puppets alum and former bassist for Bob Mould, Andrew DuPlantis. The re-emergence of pedal steel in Buckner's sonic nomenclature, played expertly by Mike Hardwick and Gary Newcomb, further solidifies the connection with Since while the liberal use of piano and organs hint at the atmosphere of The Hill with a bit more ebb and flow in style than what was exhibited on Impasse. Naturally the chosen musicians' approach to arrangements are different than previous sidemen, but Dents and Shells might best be looked at as Buckner's catalog refined into a clear and cohesive effort with which fans should be very pleased. - All Music Guide
Richard Buckner and John Langford / Sir Dark Invader vs. The FanglordReleased 2005
"Jon Langford met Richard Buckner in the security booth at Buck Owen's Crystal Palace in Bakersfield, CA where they had been chained together for their own protection. Mouths taped shut with duct tape, they communicated via primitive Morse code messages tapped out on each other's foreheads with fish bones. The ordeal was brief but formative, and after countless power breakfasts and costume parties from Edmonton to Austin, from Brooklyn to the Bay Area, they fell exhausted into a photobooth and saw how fantastic they looked together in neat black and white rectangles and smelling faintly of eggs. They decided to spend a year in Sally Timms' apartment making this album for release on Buried Treasure Records."
-- Captain J. Langford of the H.M.S. Mekon
Richard Buckner / MeadowReleased 09.12.2006
"Pretty destroyed/comin' through/sees your spin/around the room...are you sitting down?" These are some of the lyrics from "Town," the opening track on Richard Buckner's Meadow, sung to an urgent progression of distorted electric and acoustic guitars and drums. As unsettling as this is, the song is chock-full of Buckner's inherent melodic sense, and it's easier to bear, somehow, this darkness and melancholy. Produced by J.D. Foster at his home studio, and at Buckner's, with some additional work done at Brooklyn Recording, this is an album of absences, of ghosts so far down the highway only their traces remain. Buckner's sense of rock & roll is infused with images from country, folk, the desert, the blues, early American popular music; virtually everywhere he's been. In some ways one can say that these ten songs are his own companion to his recording of some of the Spoon River Anthology on Hill. Each track here has a one word title except for the final one, "The Tether and the Tie." But Buckner's revisiting the cautious grief and optimism on Bloomed, too. Everything here is written in a state of absence, of the previous, the past, and how it can be reconciled. The gorgeous shimmering piano, drums and guitars intro on "Lucky" ease into the startling words: "Forgetting where the roads align, bowing out and back again/Something made it over/A chance to cross the shards you see...." These lyrics are held together by bridges and refrains that further underscore their poetry. Its strength is in the missing middle, the hole in the middle, the thing that needs to be revisited but can't quite be because it's already gone and only gray shadows remain.- All Music Guide
3 comments:
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LOVE HIM! BRILLIANT MAN! THANKS FOR THIS SO MUCH!
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