The Hill

If you’d told us last month that one of our favorite new albums would be a song cycle adapted from a 1916 poetry anthology, we’d have laughed in your face. But country-folk songsmith Richard Buckner makes it work. The Hill is a web of harrowing murder ballads and haunted country-blues. Guitars come on vicious and delicate, but it’s Buckner’s voice—a devastating grumble equal parts Dwight Yoakam and grizzly bear—that drives it all home.