Category Archives: Listening

Christopher Owens – Lysandre

If you’ve read the reviews of Christo­pher Owens’ Lysan­dre, you’ll find quite a few crit­ics who wished he’d nev­er left Girls. His solo debut may have under­whelmed most crit­ics, but it’s a charm­ing col­lec­tion of pais­ley melan­cho­lia. I can’t get enough.

But don’t take my word for it. Read Aquar­i­um Drunk­ard’s even­hand­ed take here.

The Flaming Lips — The Terror

The Flam­ing Lips are one of those bands that releas­es a stun­ning album like The Soft Bul­letin, fol­lows up with a hit record like Yoshi­mi…, los­es the thread with At War With the Mys­tics then returns to form ten years lat­er with the painful­ly under­rat­ed Embry­on­ic. Need­less to say I’m very excit­ed for The Ter­ror. Love a band that finds ways to chal­lenge themselves—and their fans—after all these years.

In Praise of Richard Buckner

I first learned about Richard Buck­n­er in the late nineties. I’d joined the Pave­ment list­serv and when we weren’t argu­ing over which Pave­ment album was the worst (peo­ple hat­ed BtC) we’d talk about all sorts of artists pop­u­lar at the time among the indie crowd. Richard Buck­n­er was one of the names that got men­tioned often, so I bought a copy of Devo­tion + Doubt. I fell in love with it immediately.

I had­n’t lis­tened to it for quite some time, hav­ing checked out of alt-coun­try or what­ev­er that was all those years ago. Then I read about Buck­n­er’s strug­gles. and I revis­it­ed his work. 

Devo­tion + Doubt is still a breath­tak­ing album. Buck­n­er deserves the atten­tion that’s been lav­ished on Bon Iver. I can think of few albums that do so much with so lit­tle. The sparse arrange­ments leave ample room for Buck­n­er’s expres­sive voice. The sto­ry­telling is great and he nev­er laps­es into the singer-song­writer trea­cle that dooms so many solo artists. It’s just the right mix of sen­ti­men­tal­i­ty and scorn.

If you haven’t heard Buck­n­er before, check out this live video of Ed’s Song from Devo­tion + Doubt.