Buzz Blog
Richard Buckner has been making the rounds of medium-sized halls in support of the re-release of three of his albums by Merge Records: Bloomed, The Hill and Impasse. A light turnout for alt-country singer Buckner April 30 seemed to make the theatre-style hall of the State Room more intimate. His guitar picking and starkly emotional vocal delivery give his music emotional resonance beyond mere melodies and verses wedded together in an uneasy harmony. He proceeded from one song to the next with scarcely a breath in between, occasionally aided by a sample pedal reiterating a guitar motif. But the set didn’t feel rushed--the weight of each song was pondered over and sustained, by one of those rare artists who can take relatively simple formal elements to express the profound.
