Richard Buckner

THE HILL

(Overcoat)

Like any good troubadour, Richard Buckner has had a peripatetic life in the music business. After a debut release on a small Texas label, Buckner was swallowed up in the mid '90s by MCA, which may have been anxious to capitalize on the burgeoning Americana scene. Unsure of what to do with this long-haired loner who seemed more at home in the indie scene than on the AAA charts, MCA let Buckner loose after two critically acclaimed albums. Following a two-year hiatus, Buckner's back with The Hill, a musical rendering of Edgar Lee Masters's Spoon River Anthology -- a long-form poem from a somewhat neglected American poet (who was, in a sense, an alt-folkie in his own era) that gives brief, yet vivid, life to 244 inhabitants of a small Illinois town. Buckner's chosen 18 of Masters's portraits to assemble his own scrapbook of back-porch tales that detail the yearning, doubt, and deliverance of small-town life at the turn of the 20th century. Calexico/Giant Sand-men Joey Burns and John Convertino pitch in on an album dominated by acoustic guitar and spare percussion. The understated arrangements, coupled with Buckner's plaintive delivery, complement Masters's unrhymed narrative poetry remarkably well. And as bowed cello, banjo twangs, and touches of electric guitar emerge from the mix, The Hill takes shape as a vital and moving contribution to the American songbook.

-- Lois Maffeo