- Critic score
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- By date
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Alternative PressIt's moody as hell, with an aching, nameless despair and all the intimacy of a crack-up. [Jan 2005, p.108]
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Adding to the pages written by Elliott Smith and Lou Reed, Buckner is the modern age wrapped up in the frustrations and sympathies of a wanderer.
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Although this is not Buckner's masterpiece, it's a beautiful window into the head of someone who writes from the heart.
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Blender[Dents] is, by Buckner's standards, gentle. [Nov 2004, p.130]
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If Dents and Shells stands apart from Buckner's oeuvre in any way, it's in the prominence and evenhandedness of its instrumental arrangements.
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Dents and Shells matches the intensity and concision of Impasse, while adding an organic, spontaneous feel to the proceedings.
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Dents and Shells is human in the best and truest kind of way: it is the work of a man, appreciative of feeling and progress, warts and all.
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MojoPicks up where 2002's Impasse left off, with Buckner at large in a dusty, wide-screen landscape of brushed guitars, weeping pedal steel and decorous strings. [Dec 2004, p.114]
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A set of tunes blessed with melody but hardly immediately memorable.
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Dents and Shells is Buckner in top form, using a broad brush to manifest his enigmatic poetics, hallucinatory atmospheres, and melodies that appear and evaporate like breath exhaled onto cold glass.
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SpinThe songs remain the same: clear-eyed musings on breakups-as-existential-crises. [Dec 2004, p.124]
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Far more mysterious and (perhaps not coincidentally) alluring than most Buckner outings, Dents and Shells is a claustrophobic comedown album wrapped in disillusion and sorrow.
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Its unity keeps it solid, but it also keeps Dents and Shells free of surprises.
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This is one of those hushed, moody, late-night records - though with much more going on than mere melancholia.
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There's a swagger about Dents and Shells unseen since Since.
User score distribution:
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Positive: 6 out of 7
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Mixed: 0 out of 7
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Negative: 1 out of 7
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racheloFeb 4, 2005
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BenjaminBunnyNov 24, 2004
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NickOct 30, 2004Another solid release from RB - a grower - I found Impasse more immediate, but there are a couple of real gems here.