At a time when so much music can feel overthought and even overproduced, there’s comfort in the release of a rock album that just strives to carry that rock-and-roll spirit, created by friends who are all well-versed and well-respected in the industry. When singer-songwriter Joseph Arthur and guitarist Peter Buck released their first collaborative album in 2018, it just sort of happened—now here we are in 2025, and it just sort of happened again.
Arthur Buck 2 will be available this Friday, Oct. 3, via Arthur’s own Lonely Astronaut Records. While the first album was a very spontaneous “bedroom production,” Arthur says that although this album came about organically in its own way, it’s more of a full-band, in-studio record. The duo was joined by keyboardist/multi-instrumentalist Gregg Foreman, bassist Scott McCaughey and drummer Linda Pitmon in the making and recording of this set of songs. Then the group was joined by Grammy Award-winning producer Jacknife Lee in the studio.
“There wasn’t, like, ‘Oh, and then we’ll do a second record.’ But I think we liked the way [Arthur Buck] came out, and so we decided to go tour it,” says Arthur. “This time, the process was more on the road, and we just wrote songs, and would do them live, and got the arrangements up and running live. So they’re really very different records, sort of two different methods of making records.”
Arthur knowingly describes himself and his bandmates as “forward-thinking people, but also steeped in a classic mindset,” which shines through in the almost effortlessly rock-and-roll execution of the songs. But Lee’s presence as the producer is also strongly felt in this particular project. As an inventive producer, Lee didn’t exactly lay back into the “classic mindset” for this record. Arthur explains that Lee is into experimenting with different kinds of cheap tape decks, so he would run the whole mix through one of the machines for a lo-fi sound, then bring it back into super high fidelity.
“We’re probably always trying to push it forward a little bit. We don’t want to just go, ‘Let’s do something like what we’ve heard before,’ you know, but obviously not shy away from all of our strengths. Which, in Peter’s case, obviously has had an enormous cultural impact. So some of those tones and colors are in there for sure. And then, you know, Linda and Scott and Gregg are fantastic. Then you put Jacknife to mix the whole thing and add his inventiveness to it, it’s gonna have a modern twist to it,” says Arthur.
When it comes to playing to strengths, Arthur likes to work on instinct with the elements at hand, which he’s had to exercise a lot for this particular project and its rollout. The pro of working with an accomplished set of musicians is also its con—they tend to be busy and scattered. Case in point, Arthur picked up the phone for his interview with Flagpole in Paris, where he had just flown in earlier that morning. Currently on tour in Europe, Arthur and his tour manager have been shooting DIY music videos for the released singles to keep the momentum going.
“Creativity, I think, thrives with limitation, you know? If you put perfectionism to the side, it’s like, we’re on this tour right now; I’m out here alone. We need a promo clip. You could overthink that and go like, ‘Oh, well, let’s not do one, because we can’t all be together doing it.’ We’re creating stuff in spite of the fact that we’re in different parts of the world,” says Arthur.
From the album to the music videos and even the album cover, there’s an organic simplicity that creates a cohesion in feeling despite how disjointed the production of the elements might have been. It shines in passion while delivering an expansion of what could be considered classic rock for the modern times.
“From my perspective, I think it’s a really good rock-and-roll record. I think it’s fun,” says Arthur. “In this day and age, a good rock-and-roll record is kind of a cool thing, especially, you know, when you got the kind of people involved that are involved, it’s cool.”
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