Richard Buckner's Newest Album, "Impasse," Surpasses Expectations

Author: Erika Mercer

It's the final scene in a movie, when you see the main character driving off down a windy road in a beat up car, wearing an expression of resigned melancholy. The day is blustery and gray, but rainless, and there is quiet, low music playing out of the car's old tape player. Tattered and hardened by the events of the movie, the character has reached a level of self-awareness that allows him/her to be simultaneously lonely and content.
The scene, while familiar, escapes being clichÈd through its profound emotion, its sensitive details, its bittersweet, suspended ending. Richard Buckner claims that his music is "always about two percent devotion and 98 percent doubt" - a statement which fits the emotion of his songs. A California native, Buckner began playing music during his college years as an English major at Chico State, dabbling in several punk and alternative bands.
It wasn't until the early '90s that he found his more country-based sound and began composing his own songs. In 1994, Buckner released his first album, "Bloomed," under the Dejadisc label, which he supported by extensive touring along the West coast.
The album's success won him the attention of major record label, MCA Records, under which he recorded his second full length album, labeled - appropriate to his professed ars musica - "Devotion and Doubt," in 1997 and "Since" in 1998.
Following disagreements with MCA, Buckner switched to Slow River Records and re-released "Bloomed" in 1999, featuring new bonus tracks. In 2000, he switched again to Overcoat Records, under which he released "The Hill," a project undertaken to adapt Edgar Lee Master's literary work, "Spoon River Anthology" - a collection of autobiographical poems written from the perspective of inhabitants of a town's graveyard - to music.
The album, featuring guest musicians from the ban, Calexico, marked a significant step in Buckner's songwriting as he wrestled with aptly putting someone else's words to music.
"Impasse," Buckner's newest release, takes yet another stride forward in its effort to evoke fresh emotions and take lyrical risks. Buckner commented: "I wasn't satisfied, and I was at a loss as to why. I finally figured out it was because I wasn't working on my own, in my own time, alone - which I really needed to do. So I came back to Canada and rerecorded the whole thing by myself."
The self-produced, home-studio recording allows him to experiment with a warmer, more organic, grounded sound, creating songs that, while still often tender and sad, release intermediate rays of optimism - what he calls "a lot of happy accidents." "Impasse" is faster paced, shorter and more focused than his previous releases, employing catchy riffs and upbeat rhythms, juxtaposed with Buckner's weathered, bleak monotone.
In addition, "Impasse" while still classified as alt-country, relies little on the common twang and rootsy sound of other country music, branching out to embrace atypical instruments such as synthesizers and keyboards.
Besides drums, played by his ex-wife, Penny Jo Buckner, Richard Buckner performs all instrumentation himself, a sign of his veritable musical ability. Also, he displays his literary talent through complex, oblique lyrics, printed in the CD booklet as mini-letters and short stories to an ex-lover.
As one critic described, Buckner's "voice - with its arsenal of intonations, guttural lowerings, and (as Buckner himself has called them) "breathy things" - deciphers his own broken-hearted Morse code, making lyrics (lyrics one could readily dismiss as non-sensical) somehow specific and unambiguous."
Through both instrumentation and lyrics, "Impasse" illustrates Buckner's maturity and confidence: he still paints his distinctive, gray interior landscapes but dips into a new, livelier color.
"Impasse" is a polished, rewarding listen, a true demonstration of a creditable singer/songwriter's talent and conviction. In the song, "Born Into Giving It Up," Buckner sings, "Trust me, I know where I am" - and he does.
Look for Buckner's new self-titled album, soon to be released. More information at Richard Buckner's official website: http://www.richardbuckner.com/flash/index.html.