Buckner’s Since is my favorite record of his this week. “Ariel Ramirez” might be his most famous song (one friend says that no song better describes the hole at the center of that man) but “Faithful Shooter” is probably what really roped me in to the entire album. As always, it’s Buckner’s lyrics that really get at me; if poetry is a concentrated excess of language, they are poetry (even if the subject is ultimately rather maudlin…). These lines really struck me:

You looked up to her window from the backyard dusk/Hired as a shot, lingered as a crush

See I’ve only had a photograph to drag around

Would you take another trip with a candle like her/Strike another promise and watch it burn?