Richard Buckner’s second album of cross-country folk is an exploration of love’s paranoia and its resulting desperation and hopelessness. Stemming from the singer/songwriter’s divorce, the 13 songs on Devotion + Doubt reflect and, to a lesser degree, celebrate both his newfound independence and loneliness. His road-weary voice (often calmed to a whisper here) coupled with the sparing strums of his acoustic guitar, strike a point of intimacy within the songs, giving the best of them (“Pull,” “4am”) the feeling that they were reluctantly cribbed from personal diary entries. But Buckner never sounds defeated on Devotion + Doubt, only a bit haunted, as if he’s convinced himself — based on past attempts at love and their eventual failures — that he’s destined to make the same mistakes again and again, no matter how hard he tries to make a relationship work. – Michael Gallucci