Richard Buckner Impasse LP

The words are entrancingly cryptic, as if their simplicity conceals unfathomable depths. The music is sparse, almost whispered at times, like a secret. The title gives everything away, though. During the gestation of his 2002 album Impasse, Richard Buckner was stuck. But, with perseverance, what began as one of his most troubled recording attempts ended as one of his best and most pivotal—a capstone for his wayfaring early period before he planted roots with Merge.

In 1999, Buckner spent a week in a recording studio with a producer and a few other musicians to work on the songs that were supposed to become Impasse, but the session failed. Instead, he went home and recorded The Hill "as a kind of creative catalyst so I could start thinking again," he says. On it, Buckner sang poems from Edgar Lee Masters' Spoon River Anthology over warm, splintery country-folk, outwardly simple and interiorly ornate.

"I felt like I was at an impasse, like every direction was either a corner or a dead end, " Buckner says. "I was in between countries and, without really knowing it at the time, getting ready to leave everything."

The album was conceived as a faceted whole. Its lyrics are like scattered snapshots and torn-up letters. The song titles form a poem that structures a story of heartache and dreamt redemption cloistered at the music's core. Impressions, pledges, and slivered vantages swirl in Buckner's voice and, while his frustrations at the time of Impasse were only part of the twist, its transmission is so open-ended that the aura of quiet desperation and hard-won grace is yours to use as you please.

"You don't really know what you're writing at the time, " Buckner says. "Writing seems to be kind of prophetic and it makes much more sense looking back on it. But I think mystery is good. If you ever think you know what you're doing, then you're probably in bad shape."

Similar in feel and texture to his previous releases, Impasse winds around the same moody corners, experimenting with the intimacy of the best singer/songwriters and the quirky fuzz and crunch of indie rock... every song on the album is fantastic — starkly beautiful and unusually comforting.

Like Buckner's past work, Impasse is a challenge that reveals itself only after much careful listening; he's got his own meter and way with melody. Once you catch his drift, however, discovering music that's irresistible comes next.