NPR has posted an exclusive first listen of the new Richard Buckner record, Our Blood. Head over to their website to listen a week before the album is released!

Stream: Our Blood via NPR
Download: "Traitor" via Pitchfork
Download “Escape” via IFC

Since 2006’s Meadow, fans of Richard Buckner have been clamoring for new material and wondering what was keeping their hero from releasing the new songs he would perform on the road. Well, it’s a long story!

First, there was the score to a film that never happened. Then there was a brief brush with the law over a headless corpse in a burned-out car that had all eyes in Buckner’s small hometown in upstate New York turned toward him and his long-suffering truck. Shortly after a move to a safer, less popular corpse dumping ground, the death of his tape machine led to yet another reboot. After Richard called in pedal steel and percussion players and put new mixes on his laptop, his new “safer” place was burglarized. Goodbye, laptop.

Buckner says: “Eventually, the recording machine was resuscitated and some of the material was recovered. Cracks were patched. Parts were redundantly re-invented. Commas were moved. Insinuations were re-insinuated until the last percussive breaths of those final OCD utterances were expelled like the final heaves of bile, wept-out long after the climactic drama had faded to a somber, blurry moment of truth and voilà !, the record was done, or, let us be clear, abandoned like the charred shell of a car with a nice stereo.”

And so finally, we present Our Blood, to be released on CD and LP on August 2, 2011.

Richard Buckner will be touring this summer in support of the album. Interviews, guest list spots and promo materials are available now!

July 29 - Chicago, IL @ Schubas
July 30 - Milwaukee, WI @ 3rd Annual Radio Summer Camp music festival
July 31 - Minneapolis, MN @ Triple Rock Social Club
August 16 - Los Angeles, CA @ Bootleg Theater *
August 17 - San Francisco, CA @ Great American Music Hall *
August 19 - Portland, OR @ Bunk Bar *
August 20 - Seattle, WA @ The Triple Door *
August 23 - Atlanta, GA @ Smith's Olde Bar *
August 24 - Chapel Hill, NC @ The Arts Center *
August 25 - Arlington, VA @ IOTA Club & Café *
August 27 - Brooklyn, NY @ The Bell House *
August 28 - Boston, MA @ Brighton Music Hall  *
September 09 - Big Indian, NY @ Truck Festival
September 10 - Big Indian, NY @ Truck Festival
September 11 - Big Indian, NY @ Truck Festival
* August 16 - August 28 are co-headline with David Kilgour