New Richard Buckner track - "When You Tell Me How It Is" from Surrounded, due out Sept. 3

Richard Buckner's been working on a followup to Our Blood, entitled Surrounded, and it will be out in September. He's released one track, "When You Tell Me How It Is" - it features some new sounds, for Buckner, but of course the main attraction is his impassioned vocal style:

Apparently the recording process included Buckner adopting some new, unfamiliar equipment -- a Suzuki QChord electronic autoharp and an Electro-Harmonix POG2 pedal -- to create the basic tracks. In his words: “The best outcomes happen sometimes when I’m unfamiliar with the tool that I’m using (imagine MacGyver wearing a dog cone).”

Looking forward to hearing this one.

Richard Buckner at Merge

Richard Buckner - Our Blood ... streaming on NPR ... out next Tuesday

If you know Richard Buckner's music, you're as excited as I am about this release...

Here's the link to the NPR streaming site (which will probably be taken down after August 2)...

And here's a link to Buckner's website, with a tempting offer of a limited release bonus track, "Willow", if you preorder on iTunes.

On first listen, this is exactly what I'd hoped it would be and, like all previous Buckner records, so much more than I'd have reason to hope for. His voice, his guitar work and the arrangements are spare, haunting and absolutely beautiful. I can't think of anyone outside Neil Young who can use an acoustic guitar and his voice (with some hushed piano, slide guitar or synthesizer in places) to evoke this much feeling. For example, listen to the piano backdrop to "Collusion", and the overlay of piano, synthesizer and deep acoustic guitar behind his sparse vocals on "Thief".

Buckner will be touring with David Kilgour in the second half of August. Sounds like a great double bill to me... and these are already two of my favorite records of 2011.

Richard Buckner: "Traitor" from Our Blood

Merge Records announces a new Buckner record in August. It's been a while (since Meadow in 2006), but his records are worth the wait.

First song is "Traitors"

Sounds great, and good to have him back...

Here's an older video, actually one of those amazing moments you wish you'd seen in person... and if you did, you'd be telling your friends about it until they got sick of hearing about it.



Richard Buckner Website at Merge Records

Richard Buckner: "Born Into Giving It Up"

Live track from 2002, pretty good quality.

Posted on youtube by "SonKilVolt" (wonder what sort of music that person likes?)

Richard Buckner Website

Richard Buckner: "Ocean Cliff Clearing"

Richard packs a lot of expression into relatively small space. His electric stuff is even better because the music is so good it really fleshes out well, but this is a good quality recording of an acoustic version of this song. If you like it, check out the full version on Since. In fact, if you don't have a copy of Since, I highly recommend that as your next purchase.