I lost touch with Buckner after this one. Maybe because I didn't need any more. Whenever I went to see Buckner play live, usually a matinee show in a very smoky, grimy place right on Main St KCMO, I was on the verge of some illness. Typically, at a show with a fever rising throughout, this fever would break at some apex and for the remainder of the set I'd stand shivering in sweat, hallucinatory, used. This happened more than oncewhile seeing him & after I'd miss a few days of work for the flu or bronchitis or something. So maybe it was for my health I ended my Buckner fascination.
And it was with The Hill that I got two birds done kilt with one effort -- Buckner and Edgar Lee Masters. I'd never put the two together. Thought never occurred to me they speak the same lengua. I'd read Masters first in 1988 in a mid-Mo college classroom and was wayleighed, flummoxed I'd never heard of this guy. WTF world! He exhausted me.
So here's Buckner doing Masters' Spoon River Anthology and me in a cold sweat on The Hill.
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Allmusic's sketchy review: Edgar Lee Masters' Spoon River Anthology, a series of poems originally published in serial form in 1914-1915, provided the subject matter for nomadic troubadour Richard Buckner's 2000 release The Hill. In the poems, the dead in an Illinois graveyard relay details from their lives in matter-of-factly haunting tones. When originally published, Masters' believable characters tore away at the strict moral facade of small-town life through their tales of adultery, casual murder, and morphine addiction. Who better than Buckner to interpret these lost souls' voices in his growling, plaintive murmur, accompanied most often by sparse acoustic guitar and stark accompaniment. Through this earthy channeler, the names from ragged gravestones almost float in front of the listener while hollowed eyes reveal the details of their own deaths.
Unfortunately, while the subject matter and the musician are an ideal match, the album as a whole falls short of Buckner's famous heartfelt intimacy and inventive songwriting. Fans who have come to appreciate his snapshot imagery and dark wordplay may be disappointed at this interpretation of someone else's work, as appropriate as it may be. The 18 individual poems are recorded as one continuous 34-minute track, making it difficult to tell when one woman's childbirth death travels into another man's drunken despair, and the warm acoustic guitar, mandolin, and violin are on occasion jarringly interrupted by misplaced electronic sweeps and buzzes. Still, the haunting charm of "Oscar Hummel" and "Emily Sparks" show the familiar passion and honesty the singer is known for. Buckner continues to distance himself from the limiting country-folk label with increasingly ambitious projects, all of which are interesting but some of which fail to fully utilize his talents.
Blogger's note: Wrong. They didn't read Spoon River before writing this, obviously.
Blogger's Admission: Emily Sparks at min 24 is still an instant weeper here.
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