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Album Details

• Artist: Richard Buckner
• Album: Dents and Shells
• Label: Merge
• Year of Release: 2004
• ME Rating:
• Reviewed by: dscanland on 2004-12-23

I have been a Richard Buckner fan since I accidentally stumbled on Bloomed. Dents and Shells actually marks another branch of his career as he heads over to Merge Records to try out his luck with them. It seems an appropriate place to call home. After doing a record with just his ex-wife, Penny Jo, it seemed that Richard had had enough of the cold Edmonton weather and headed south once again to pick up his life and his music career after they split up. So Dents and Shells is effectively another divorce album but it is quite a bit sunnier than Devotion + Doubt. This is probably the brightest Buckner has been for quite some time. But a bright Buckner doesn't mean all fun and games. "Firsts" is a very stark effort and marks one of the finest efforts on Dents and Shells. He has more of a band behind him this time around, not hard considering there were just two musicians on Impasse. He remains positive with happier songs like "Straight". You might be able to work some divorce material into "Her" and a couple of other songs. But that's fine because this is really an amazing song with Buckner stretching out a little more than we usually see him. The re-introduction of pedal steel is welcome. It adds to songs such as this, in a way that Buckner could only imagine. Another bleak song is "As The Waves Will Always Roll" and man, is it heart-wrenching. With the diversity that Buckner manages on Dents and Shells, he makes this his finest album to date, even outshining my favorite Bloomed. Hopefully the folks over at Merge will respect what Buckner is doing and keep him around for a while.

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