Richard Buckner - Our Blood - Décor - DECOR026CD

Richard Buckner wallowed in the wake of Alternative Country's first wave, arriving in the mid-nineties with looks, licks, and sparsely affecting lyrics that hit home harder than his competitors'.
His ninth release, delayed by business wrangles and questions regarding a headless corpse found hear his home, arrives trumpeted by feted followers, Bon Iver and Richmond Fontaine. Few albums accommodate cameos by members of both Sonic Youth and The New Riders Of The Purple Sage, but assembled largely by Buckner alone Our Blood rarely swings like the best of his back-catalogue.

Nonetheless, the instrumentation throughout has a nice noir-ish Western feel, and Buckner's quavering, cracking voice could still fell a cynic at fifty feet.

(23/10/11)