Then there's Richard Buckner, an itinerant singer/songwriter responsible for three albums -- Bloomed, Devotion + Doubt, Since -- that redefined the sound and vocabulary of altcountry rock and rock-tinged folk. Like Son Volt's Jay Farrar, Buckner has a dark, husky groan of a voice and writes obtuse, seemingly impenetrable songs teeming with subtle wordplay that only partially obscures the melancholy beneath. With The Hill Buckner has crafted a masterful and evocative interpretation of Edgar Lee Masters's The Spoon River Anthology, a set of small-town character studies published in 1915. A milestone in Buckner's evolution as a wordsmith, The Hill contains his most forthright lyrics, the eighteen songs (all but one named for citizens of the fictional town Spoon River) flowing as one richly aching portrait of romantic despair, tormented isolation, and devastating grief.
The music, meanwhile, is as daring and adventurous as The Hill's ambitious concept. Abetted by his long-time producer/collaborator J.D. Foster and Calexico's Joey Burns and John Convertino, Buckner fuses acoustic folk-blues drone with avant-garde noise and arty random percussion. The disc is banded as one long song, with each sad tale melding into brief instrumental interludes that give the album the feel of a bizarro folk-rock opera. It has all the makings of a ponderous mess, yet Buckner pulls it off in ways that should humble high-brow dullards like Townshend and Reed.
