Richard Buckner – Dents And Shells

Richard Buckner’s finest albums, 1997’s Devotion + Doubt and its 1998 follow-up Since, arose from similar circumstances: He holed up alone to write the songs, then immersed himself with musicians from a particular local scene to record them. The pattern is repeated on the new Dents And Shells, this time not with Tucson musicians (as on Devotion) or Chicago players (Since), but with the likes of King Coffey, Jason Morales, Andrew Duplantis, Brian Standefer and others from Austin.

Dents sounds like no great departure for Buckner, but it is an evolution of his sound. It boasts a dose of the clattering, sometimes syncopated drums that first appeared on 2002’s Impasse, but less of that record’s lyrical obtuseness. And while it’s a difficult disc to digest at first — rejecting as it does most literal, linear narrative, not to mention the verse-chorus-verse standard of song structure entirely — it also offers a comforting note to longtime Buckner fans: Though it was recorded for the Chapel Hill indie-rock mainstay Merge Records, Dents And Shells returns steel guitar to the terrain of a Richard Buckner album.

Another notable aspect is the importance of piano in much of this material. Murmuring keys supply a rhythm for “Firsts”, and a richly melancholy run underlies “Straight”. On “Her”, the ivories worry over a hooky three-note figure, while “Picture Day” glows ghostly with organ.

Lyrically, Buckner remains about as easy to grasp as a gust of wind. Nonetheless, for every oblique turn of phrase, there’s another line (“I pulled the rafters down, but the ghosts were only dropping”) that evokes his typically autumnal admixture of passion, melancholy and regret.

By disc’s end, he’s not exactly hopeful, but if nothing else you can hear acceptance in the closing track. As quietly thunderous drums rumble in the distance, the itinerant songster sighs what sounds like a lullaby: “Oh the waves will always roll.”