Desert hotel room midnight bard Buckner, usually just wielding a battered guitar and his big, rough, beautifully flawed voice, had made one great album in the rosy glow of marriage (his debut, Bloomed) and an even better one in the spectre of that marriage collapsing (Devotion + Doubt). Since, recorded in New York City with producer JD Foster and able help like David Grubbs (Gastr Del Sol, Palace), John McEntire (Tortoise), Eric Heywood (Son Volt), and Syd Straw, isn't so easy to pin down. Sixteen songs and dust-dry, the record is filled with wispy melodies and fleeting poetic scraps that take many listens to grasp. Yes, he still tacks -er onto every other word, but the words slide over one another like fingerpaints.
Fans of "A Goodbye Rye", from Devotion + Doubt, will find plenty to like in loping new country-rockers like "Jewelbomb", "Goner W/ Souvenir" and "Coursed", on which Buckner's melodies actually approach pop. The full-band approach permeates the album with spine-tingling moments like the dense, meancing rumble of "Believer", the charging rockout of "Brief & Boundless", the wide steel guitar swoop of "Hand @ The Hem", and the resigning closing ballad "Once", begging Buckner to alter his solo live format for a full group production.
Equally engrossing are solo acoustic selections like "Aerial Ramirez" and "Raze", wherein wayward Bucknerian verse ("What'd you say we head on down the hill? We'll light up the sky w/ the look in our eyes and a lifetime left to kill") topples amid Richard's rugged pick-and-strum. Foster's crisp ambience ensures that you'll hear every crack and fissure in Buckner's warm, weary growl. As someone once said, he hits wrong notes in all the right places. Then he'll turn around and belt the Appalachian blues of "Boys, The Night Will Bury You" like a mountain virtuoso.
Buckner is best experienced live. Watching the man sit on a stool with no setlist and sing for two hours, letting the songs come like comets, is as moving an experience as you'll find in the singer/songwriter realm. While Since doesn't quite equal that lofty standard, it's a superlative guarantee that Buckner is still fairly eaten alive with heartrending, evocative images to sing about, even if they're too cryptic to reveal a lot about happened "Since". Like the "Couple dancing close and drunk in the spray of lights they made" in "Once", Buckner appreciates the romance of lonely Econolodges, late-night phone calls, candles burning out, sweltering twilights of days and relationships. Listen long enough and it's not hard to glimpse his bittersweet, rambling spirit in overlooked things around you.
--Lane Hewitt