The Hill

The Hill is the fourth studio album by Richard Buckner, setting poems from Edgar Lee Masters' 1915 Spoon River Anthology to music. It was released by Overcoat Records in 2000, and re-released by Merge Records in 2015. Background In PopMatters, Lee Zimmerman wrote about "the album’s genesis. It was inspired by Buckner's stay at a scruffy, out of the way motel near the mouth of Death Valley, California, a week that found him bereft of a phone, TV or any other modern conveniences. With only his guitar and a copy of the anthology to help him pass the time, he worked up a few of the poems, recorded them on cassette and promptly forgot about what he had compiled. It wasn't until an acquaintance discovered the demos in Buckner's truck four years later, that the album actually came to life." Recording Brian Howe wrote in Pitchfork, "In 1996, Buckner recorded The Hill while taking a break from recording Devotion + Doubt, but didn't do anything with it until the tape surfaced in his truck four years later. With a guitar, an E-bow, and a keyboard, he entered the studio with Calexico's Joey Burns and John Convertino, but forbade them any traditional percussion. Burns played cello, and Convertino improvised percussion from things around the studio." Reception For Trouser Press, Eric Hage wrote, "It's a tribute to Buckner's rugged individualism that he emerged from his major-label dance to put together The Hill, one sprawling, 34-minute track based on early 20th century poet Edgar Lee Masters' Spoon River Anthology (character pieces in which the dead in an Illinois graveyard ruminate on their often tragic lives)... The moody ruralism and tragic themes fit snugly in his canon; he crafts some gorgeously heart-piercing numbers from the ancient grief of such poems as 'Julia Miller' and 'Elizabeth Childers' and adds various sorts of haunting ephemera, including slow, rusty organ and wisps of feedback."