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On their second collaboration, Peter Buck and cult troubadour Joseph Arthur make some late-period indie magic <\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n
\n\t\u201cYou\u2019re the pick of the week\/You\u2019re the editor\u2019s hot pick\/For the third week in a row,\u201d sings Joseph Arthur<\/a> on Arthur Buck 2<\/em>, his second collaboration with former R.E.M. jangle master Peter Buck<\/a>. If anyone should know about the highs and lows of show-biz life, it\u2019s Arthur. For the last quarter century, he\u2019s been our great lost singer-songwriter, with sometimes only himself to blame for the \u201clost\u201d part. Despite an innate gift for melodic beauty and a bedraggled voice that would rouse itself to startling intensity, he was often derailed by substance abuse issues and a deluge of releases that were clearly in need of an editor or A&R executive to prune.<\/p>\n \n\tBut every so often, on later albums like The Graduation Ceremony<\/em>, Arthur summoned up the potential heard on early 21st<\/sup> century albums like Come to Where I\u2019m From<\/em> and Our Shadows Will Remain<\/em>, and Arthur Buck 2<\/em> is one of those moments. Even more so than their 2018 debut, Buck sounds as if he\u2019s been itching to crank his guitars as loud as he did on Monster<\/em>, and the record often comes off as the glam-folk sequel to\u00a0that album (or Automatic for the People<\/em>) we didn\u2019t think we needed. The foggy jangle of \u201cEverywhere\u201d would have been at home on Automatic<\/em>, and dense clutter of voice and guitars on \u201cWhere Are You Calling?\u201d brings to mind \u201cLet Me In\u201d from Monster<\/em>.<\/p>\n