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Editor’s note: Ten-Year Itch is a weekly column focusing on a film or album at least 10 years old and deserving of a second look.
No person should have to endure the breakup that spawned “Devotion + Doubt.”
Richard Buckner’s 1997 career highlight is an angry, tear-stained portrait of love gone wrong.
The California troubadour had just endured a heart-smashing divorce, which is the bedrock for these lovelorn tales.
It is a testament to Buckner’s songwriting that these songs still take on a soothing nature. With such bitterness and depression running through the songs, it is a wonder any solace could slip through, but it does.
Assumedly, the creation of these tracks was something Buckner had to do to move on from the woman he lost, and the listeners reap the benefits.
While the tracks are soothing and easy to get through, they also contain some dark humor.
On one of the album’s standout cuts, “Lil’ Wallet Picture”, Buckner tells the tale of dividing up the house he shared with this woman. He sings of loading up a rented trailer and struggling through goodbyes. As he leaves, the trailer falls off its hitch and kills his cat.
Now, an animal dying is nothing to snicker at, but in some Clark Griswold-esque series of misfortune, Buckner is able to interject a haunting chuckle.
As Buckner expresses his emotions, the songs remain intimate in musicianship but not always in lyrics. At points, descriptions of events are veiled, but for the things Buckner is not sharing with his listeners there is so much more he is willing to offer up about this particular trial in his life.
For the most part, men are supposed to accept events such as a breakup or a death and move along. The sharing of feelings is not something considered “manly.” The stigma is the reason something such as Jason Segel sobbing constantly in “Forgetting Sarah Marshall” has to be paired with comedy, because men just don’t do that.
Buckner did do that. There is no crying laid to tape here, but there are emotions shared, and they are not accompanied by laugh-out-loud comedy and fictional British rock stars. Acoustic guitar, fiddles and sparse percussion pepper these shots of confession, making them much more wrenching.
Romantic rumbles have been the catalyst for many great records in the past. “Devotion + Doubt” is one of the most recent and best odes to a soul-crushing breakup.
