by Michael GallucciRichard 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.