Richard Buckner – Impasse
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Posted On November 1, 2002
Richard Buckner’s fifth disc did not come easily. He first conceived a collaboration with guitarist Eric Heywood and Sebadoh drummer Jason Loewenstein, but the results left him unsatisfied, so Buckner scrapped the tapes and retreated to Edmonton, Alberta, with his wife, Penny Jo. There the couple cobbled together a home studio, and Buckner wrote, played and recorded Impasse entirely alone, save for the drums (played by Penny, from whom Buckner has since separated).
Made in such isolation, it’s safe to assume Impasse is the plainest approximation yet of the music Buckner hears in his head — and it’s a weird, wonderful symphony, taking the sound of 1998’s Since and 2000’s The Hill further into the thorny thickets of the roots-rock fringe and well into territory lately traipsed by Sparklehorse, Centro-Matic and Califone.
Most songs start from strummed figures and bare vocals, then build, Buckner’s idiosyncratic guitar lines snaking over shakers and drums. On the rock numbers (“Hoping Wishers Never Lose”, “Count Me In On This One”), electric leads tangle with dirty, driving rhythm riffs. The acoustic tunes (“& The Clouds’ve Lied”, “Dusty From The Talk”) tend to break down again to naked nylon or steel strings and Buckner’s breathy growl. Here and there slide guitars rattle and twang, and everywhere synth strings, sweet enough to induce toothache, hum under the verses or blossom in the breaks.
And then, of course, there are Buckner’s lyrics. This set, his first in more than four years, is his most wordy and obtuse. Only “Put On What You Wanna”, a quietly melodic ballad reminiscent of “Once”, has anything like a traditional refrain; the rest are highly allusive and deeply allegorical (or maybe just nonsensical) clusters of verses alive with assonance and internal rhyme.
The album version of “Born Into Giving It Up” is reprised on Impasse-ette, a lamely titled EP that includes a few non-album instrumental snippets and, most interestingly, acoustic demo takes on “Born Into” and another Impasse tune, “Loaded At The Wrong Door”.
