After being off of my radar for a few months, Richard Buckner was suddenly front and center last week. First came word of his new disc with Waco Brother/Mekon Jon Langford, then came Buckner himself, performing in Iowa City. These two things together helped to solidify my thought that Bucker is better – or at least more enjoyable – when working in a band context than as a solo artist. That runs counter to critical opinion, of course, as his early, more bare-bones work is seen as being better than later, more fleshed-out work. But one listen to the opening track of the disc with Langford, a rowdy, full-band tune with more energy than anything Buckner has done since his 1997 disc Since, makes clear that the kick in the pants provided by others is a benefit.

While a solo acoustic show can be constraining, Buckner continues to play with the form to the betterment of his show. As in the recent past, he did interesting things on this night with samples and loops with which he created multi-layered songbeds from short guitar lines that served as outros to one song and the intro to the next to form one long, continuous set. That said, I’ve heard every song Buckner has released (to my knowledge) and listened to his latest, Dents and Shells, just the day before, and still only recognized two or three songs in a 15- to 20-song set. Without the variation of tempo and dynamics afforded by a band, his set seemed to be one long, occasionally interesting song (the droning bumpers notwithstanding).

An opening set from Anders Parker was similar; his acoustic guitar-driven solo set was nice, but no match for his work with Varnaline or the band approach of his recent solo album and EP. He fared better than Buckner in spots because he does a better job of using his powerful voice to bring dynamics to his set.

Hearing the new disc from their fellow alt-country escapee Jay Farrar helps to further illustrate the point. After three solo discs of increasingly obtuse and quiet music (two solo records and the soundtrack to the indie film “The Slaughter Rule”), Farrar is back with a version of his band Son Volt. While each of those solo forays yielded interesting results, neither had the immediacy or energy of this new Son Volt disc, Okemah and the Melody of Riot. Farrar is a prodigiously talented songwriter, but those talents lie not as much in experimental songcraft or obtuse solo excursions as in writing for a full-on rock band. He’ll likely never equal the beauty, grace and verve of Son Volt’s debut, Trace, but still it’s nice to have him back to doing what he does best. The hooks are plentiful here, and the spitting anger of topical tracks like “Jet Pilot” and “Bandages and Scars” makes this the most visceral music he has made since Uncle Tupelo’s Anodyne.

Over at the Reading Experience blog, a healthy debate has sprung up in part over the tendency of critics to write not about a book so much as about the book they wish the author had written. I seem to fall into the same trap here, saying Farrar and Buckner should stick to full-band work. But I’ll draw the distinction, however fuzzy, that when comparing two different kinds of work (books, CDs or anything else) it’s quite reasonable to divine a preference. The more experimental, solo works that I find to fall short of their more accessible counterparts still have their merits and should be judged accordingly. I’m happy to see both Buckner and Farrar explore the outer reaches of their art as long as they don’t do so to the exclusion of what they do best. If anything, I'm swimming against the critical tide for preferring more pedestrian, straight-ahead rock over more challenging material. Oh well. I'd rather enjoy James Lee Burke or George Pelecanos than slog through Joyce. So sue me.