Details
Track Listing
1. Believer
2. Faithful Shooter
3. Ariel Ramirez
4. Jewelbomb
5. Ocean Cliff Clearing, The
6. Goner W/Souvenir
7. Slept
8. Pico
9. Coursed
10. Lucky Buzz
11. 10-Day Room
12. Brief & Boundless
13. Raze
14. Hand @ the Hem
15. Boys, The Night Will Bury You
16. Once
Album Notes
Personnel: Richard Buckner (vocals, guitar, piano); John David Foster (guitar, tenor guitar, mandolin, piano, organ, Moog synthesizer, bass, percussion); Syd Straw (guitar, background vocals); Dave Schramm, Chris Cochrane (guitar); Eric Heywood (pedal steel guitar); Steve Burgh (mandolin); David Grubbs (piano, harmonium, organ); John McEntire (drums, percussion).
Take a gander at the foreboding look on Buckner's face in the inside cover photo; this is not a cheery fellow. Like Mark Eitzel and Buckner's hero Townes Van Zandt, this singer-songwriter makes a musical virtue out of despair. He began as a downcast alt-country cat with an eye on the lonesome troubadour title of Van Zandt (Gen X division). On this, his third album, he continues the musical progression he began on the previous DEVOTION + DOUBT. Toward that end he employs the post-rock talents of members of Tortoise and Gastr Del Sol, who move things out of the alt-country ghetto into a far artier place.
Buckner's gruff, desperate sounding voice is the perfect vehicle for lyrics that are poetic but almost unyieldingly elliptical. On "Raze" he betrays the influence of another gloom bunny, Leonard Cohen, employing Lenny's trademark "mosquito" nylon-string picking pattern. The least abstract tune here, "Boys, the Night Will Bury You" is the one that comes closest to the Van Zandt crown, with its ominous theme and folky minor-key melody. "Once" wraps things up in a properly elegiac fashion. More rock-oriented than previous releases, but still agreeably outre.
Industry Reviews
The backwoods poet from San Francisco comes out blazing, but his abstract love letters ache as hard and wild here as those on 1996's more somber DEVOTION + DOUBT....A stunner and further proof that the future of rock may be country. - Rating: A
Entertainment Weekly (08/14/1998)
6 (out of 10) - ...Richard Buckner hurts all the time....SINCE is the San Franciscan's third record, and he still can't outrun those gray clouds of emotion. Actually, Buckner embraces his sorrow, finding a particular strength in crafting song after song about the pain of existing...
Spin (09/01/1998)
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