PETER BUCK
''WARZONE EARTH''
OCTOBER 16 2015
39:44
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1 I Hate My Life And The Way I Live 03:01
Chris Slusarenko/Bass Guitar
Bill Rieflin/Drums, Percussion, Handclaps
Peter Buck/Guitar, Vocals
Kurt Bloch/Lead Guitar, Handclaps
Scott McCaughey/Organ (Farfisa), Backing Vocals, Handclaps
2 Playhouse 04:09
Scott McCaughey/Bass Guitar, Backing Vocals
Bill Rieflin/Drums, Tambourine
Peter Buck/Guitar, Vocals
Kurt Bloch/Lead Guitar
3 The End Is Still Unclear 03:20
Scott McCaughey/Bass Guitar
Bill Rieflin/Drums
Chris Slusarenko/Guitar
Peter Buck/Guitar, Vocals
Kurt Bloch/Lead Guitar
4 Movie Star 03:17
Peter Buck/Acoustic Guitar, Guitar, Vocals
Scott McCaughey/Bass Guitar, Backing Vocals
Bill Rieflin/Drums, Percussion
Kurt Bloch/Lead Guitar
5 Headfull Of Rain 02:29
Scott McCaughey/Bass Guitar, Harmony Vocals, Tambourine
Bill Rieflin/Drums
Peter Buck/Guitar, Vocals, Twelve-String Guitar, Acoustic Guitar
Kurt Bloch/Lead Guitar
6 Your Crooked Mind 03:26
Scott McCaughey/Lap Steel Guitar, Harmony Vocals
Kurt Bloch/Lead Guitar
Bill Rieflin/Vibraphone
Peter Buck/Vocals, Acoustic Guitar
7 It Ain't Killing Me 03:40
Scott McCaughey/Bass Guitar, Backing Vocals
Bill Rieflin/Drums, Maracas
Chris Slusarenko/Guitar (Fuzz Guitar)
Kurt Bloch/Lead Guitar
Peter Buck/Vocals, Guitar
8 Saturday Sunday Monday 04:05
Scott McCaughey/Bass Guitar
Bill Rieflin/Drums, Percussion
Chris Slusarenko/Guitar
Peter Buck/Guitar, Vocals, Bass (Fender VI Bass)
Chloe Johnson/Harmony Vocals
Kurt Bloch/Lead Guitar
9 Long Time Dead 03:31
Krist Novoselic/Bass Guitar
Bill Rieflin/Drums
Kurt Bloch/Guitar
Peter Buck/Guitar, Vocals
Scott McCaughey/Lap Steel Guitar
10 Lately I've Been Hanging Out At Home 03:22
Scott McCaughey/Lap Steel Guitar, Piano
Bill Rieflin/Timpani (Tympani), Tambourine
Peter Buck/Vocals, Acoustic Guitar, Guitar (Ebow)
11 Gun-Shaped Heart 02:53
Scott McCaughey/Bass Guitar, Backing Vocals
Bill Rieflin/Drums, Tambourine
Chris Slusarenko/Guitar
Peter Buck/Guitar, Vocals
Kurt Bloch/Lead Guitar
12 World Spins Around You 02:27
Peter Buck/Acoustic Guitar
Scott McCaughey/Piano, Electric Piano (Fender Rhodes), Tambourine
Jeff Tweedy/Vocals
Kristin Tornfelt/Vocals
Annalisa Tornfelt/Vocals, Nyckelharpa
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REVIEW/AMG
Stephen Thomas Erlewine
Third record, same as the first: once again Peter Buck taps into garage gunk, three-chord ravers, and weirdo folk-psychedelia, all of which would find a home during the graveyard shift on college radio. Buck's execution is a bit sharper on Warzone Earth than it was on 2012's eponymous debut, an impression somewhat strengthened by how the record is essentially divided in two, containing one noisier half and a spookier side. Even with this (extremely) loose division, much of the album's charm derives from its messiness: Buck remains devoted to all the wild, odd sounds that started to fade around the time "Losing My Religion" made his band a household name. Alternating between giddy throwaways and songs where their evident craft is passed off as incidental, Warzone Earth isn't meant as anything but a good little record -- something seemingly knocked off in a couple of sessions and meant to be consumed with a couple of six-packs -- but that modesty remains endearing because it has a human, soulful raggedness that resonates.
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BIOGRAPHY/AMG
Jason Ankeny
Peter Buck was the guitarist for R.E.M., arguably the most important and influential American rock band of the post-punk era. Born December 6, 1956, in Berkeley, California, he was managing the Athens, Georgia-based Wuxtry record shop when he met University of Georgia student Michael Stipe, and with bassist Mike Mills and drummer Bill Berry, they formed R.E.M. in the spring of 1980. Distinguished by Buck's chiming guitar riffs, the group honed an atmospheric, jangly pop sound often reminiscent of the Byrds, touring relentlessly prior to issuing their debut single, "Radio Free Europe," on the tiny Hib-Tone label in mid-1981; after the record's success on college radio attracted the attention of I.R.S. Records, they released the Chronic Town EP a year later. R.E.M.'s first full-length album, 1983's Murmur, cemented their reputation as critics' darlings; despite little mainstream airplay, 1984's Reckoning reached the Top 30 and with the darkly beautiful follow-up Fables of the Reconstruction, the band earned increasing MTV visibility for the videos "Can't Get There from Here" and "Driver 8."
While 1986's Life's Rich Pageant revealed a growing awareness with sociopolitical concerns (among them environmental issues and American foreign policy), the following year's Document was R.E.M.'s commercial breakthrough, buoyed by the Top Ten hit "The One I Love." Released on Election Day 1988, the Warner Bros. label debut Green was R.E.M.'s most pointedly polemic effort to date, although the hits "Stand" and "Pop Song 89" also reflected the band's wry sense of humor. Following the Green tour, R.E.M. took an extended break, during which time Buck, Mills, and Berry teamed with singer/songwriter Warren Zevon to record an LP as the Hindu Love Gods. Buck, who earlier produced the Feelies' 1986 comeback LP The Good Earth, also helmed sessions for Kevn Kinney (MacDougal Blues), Run Westy Run (Green Cat Island), and Uncle Tupelo (March 16-20, 1992); a comic book written and drawn by then-unknown singer/songwriter Jack Logan even depicted the guitarist as a superhero.
R.E.M. returned in 1991 with the chart-topping Out of Time, which generated the Top Ten hits "Losing My Religion" and "Shiny Happy People"; the elegiac masterpiece Automatic for the People followed in 1992 and as alternative rock took over the pop charts, the band was widely acknowledged among the chief inspirations behind a generation of new artists. In the wake of 1995's Monster, Buck formed the side project Tuatara, an experimental, free jazz-inspired collective also featuring the Screaming Trees' Barrett Martin and Luna's Justin Harwood; the group's debut album, Breaking the Ethers, appeared a year later, followed in 1998 by Trading With the Enemy. In 1997, he also teamed with ex-American Music Club frontman Mark Eitzel for the collaborative LP West. He returned to R.E.M. -- by then a trio following Berry's retirement -- for 1998's Up, the album that established that the group could continue without Berry. Over the next decade, Buck would pursue side projects between R.E.M. albums, frequently playing with such old friends as Robyn Hitchcock and Scott McCaughey; he played bass in McCaughey's band the Baseball Project.
R.E.M. announced their disbandment in the fall of 2011. In the spring of 2012, Buck announced he was recording his first solo album. The eponymous result was released in October in an extremely limited edition of 2,000 vinyl copies. Buck busied himself with the occasional supporting gig for his solo debut and also with his Todos Santos Music Festival, a charitable multi-day festival he launched in 2012 and which would be held on a regular basis over the next few years. Early in 2014, Buck returned with I Am Back to Blow Your Mind Once Again, another vinyl-only album. He toured behind the LP, supporting Alejandro Escovedo on a few dates. A third vinyl-only album, Warzone Earth, appeared in October 2015.
1/10 Million BC/3:00
2/I'm Alright/3:29
3/Some Kind Of Velvet Sunday Morning/4:09
4/Travel Without Arriving/4:03
5/Migraine/2:10
6/Give Me Back My Wig/2:45
7/Nothing Matters/3:31
8/So Long Johnny/2:27
9/L.V.M.F/1:18
10/Nothing Means Nothing/3:38
11/Hard Old World/3:58
12/Nowhere No Way/2:29
13/Vaso Loco/1:50
14/I'm Alive/4:07
BIOGRAPHY
by Stephen Thomas Erlewine
It's not a huge surprise that Peter Buck is the first member of R.E.M. to release a solo album after their 2011 breakup. Even at the band's peak the guitarist seemed restless, dedicating his downtime to playing, producing, and jamming, appearing on more side projects and singer/songwriter albums than can be counted. With that same sense of urgency he cut his solo debut, hammering it out quickly with such familiar friends as guitarist Scott McCaughey and drummer Bill Rieflin, keeping the door open for such famous friends as Lenny Kaye, Corin Tucker, and Mike Mills, whose presence indicates there is little ill will between the old bandmates. As if to lessen expectations, Buck released the self-titled album in a limited-edition vinyl pressing, but the fact that it's only available on record is appropriate, as this is a complete throwback to the halcyon days before CDs -- not 1975 but 1985, when the paisley underground was thriving alongside a sleazy garage rock revival. Certainly, the most surprising thing about Peter Buck is how filthy it feels. It kicks off with "10 Million BC," a down-and-dirty minor-key rocker that functions as an ideal introduction to Buck's gravelly voice, and this is no one-off. Buck charges through a sleazy little cover of Hound Dog Taylor's "Give Me Back My Wig," rips through "Vaso Loco" -- a song so grimy the words bleed into the guitars -- and even grinds through a slow 12-bar shuffle of "Hard Old World," concluding the LP with a churning, circular psych-rocker called "I'm Alive." Whenever things aren't noisy they're hazy, the album drifting into slow, pretty psychedelia colored by just a hint of folk-rock. It is, in the purest sense, a back-to-basics move for Buck: he's turned the clock back 25 years, making the album he may have always wished R.E.M. made instead of Fables of the Reconstruction.
