“You’re the pick of the week/You’re the editor’s hot pick/For the third week in a row,” sings Joseph Arthur on Arthur Buck 2 , his second collaboration with former R.E.M. jangle master Peter Buck . If anyone should know about the highs and lows of show-biz life, it’s Arthur. For the last quarter century, he’s been our great lost singer-songwriter, with sometimes only himself to blame for the “lost” part. Despite an innate gift for melodic beauty and a bedraggled voice that would rouse itself to startling intensity, he was often derailed by substance abuse issues and a deluge of releases that were clearly in need of an editor or A&R executive to prune.

But every so often, on later albums like The Graduation Ceremony , Arthur summoned up the potential heard on early 21 st century

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