Richard Buckner
Since
(hear it)

This is a great straightforward folk-rock album from 1998. The other Buckner stuff I've heard has been mostly solo voice and guitar, and I feel the production here makes for a much more engrossing album. The spare parts succeed much more in contrast to the full arrangements. That's a key for me: an album shouldn't sound like the same song over and over again. Now granted, that's what a lot of people go for, judging by the number of bands whose recordings and performances are thick with consistency. With respect to performances, I can't understand why people don't get bored. Recordings, on the other hand, are often listened to in a context, where a person wants to create a certain mood for a time. This makes them much more difficult to create, because they also have to satisfy people who will be paying close attention, people such as the artists themselves.

The job then, it seems to me, unless you are making music solely for careful perception, is to keep an identity through the album, a personality who then has various experiences. Buckner's Since does this impressively. He and producer JD Foster surround the songs and singing, which are largely of a kind from track to track, with everything from David Grubbs's odd piano stabs and John McEntire's awesome drumming, to a simple guitar/voice performance.

I think it's particularly effective with Richard Buckner, because to tell the truth I don't always want to listen carefully to his songs, and his lyrics especially. It's like Cat Stevens with less of the pop rhyming and song structure that help distance you from Stevens's problems. The singing and worldview expressed can really twist into your head. There's a type of prairie plant whose seed is shaped like a drill, such that if you put it in a bag it will work its way out through the corners. Perhaps the production here is like that bag, like a time-release capsule around some medication which taken directly into the blood would knock me out.

bb, 14 apr 08