Jeff Buckley - Grace - Spin magazine, October, 1994, by Byron Coley.
One of my favorite sorts of music has no real generic handle by which it can be carried into the marketplace. Informed by jazz, rock, and folk traditions, it is not specifically aligned with any of them, vibrating in the air like a mahogany hen's egg held in the grip of unseen forces. Performers capable of producing this stuff include Fred Neil, Tim Buckley, Michael Chapman, Karen Dalton, Roy Harper, Tommy Flanders, Cassandra Wilson, Tim Hardin, Bob Brown, and others. One new name to add to this list is Jeff Buckley.
Jeff is the son of the late master singer Tim Buckley, and one assumes (from the fact that his bio doesn't mention his father) that theirs was not a close relationship. On his debut, Live at Sin-e, whenever Jeff's singing became too similar to his dad's, he'd head off into that quivery direction that Robert Plant used to, singing about things like "Silver and golden carrots / Fighting for a dead dog's love." This is an incredibly annoying tendency, but it's one that Buckley seems to be utilizing less and less.
As evidenced by Grace (and a great promo EP called Peyote Radio Theatre), Buckley is feeling a bit more self-confident these days. Some of this may come from the grounding his material has been given by the extraordinary guitarist Gary Lucas, with whom he works on some tunes here. Another layer of luxuriously creative loam is put down by the arrangements of Karl Berger (best known as an avant-garde vibraphonist), and Buckley seems to flourish in this particular garden.
The songs on Grace range from the perverted pop moves of "So Real" (a composition that could have been lifted from Big Star's Third), to a pigeon-wide cover of Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah," to the exquisite tongue-pressure of "Dream Brother" (a masterpiece of pseudo East-meets-West formalism). Obnoxious tendrils of Plantism surface here and there, but Buckley follows his natural vocal inclinations more often than he tries to subvert them.
If Buckley continues to evolve in the direction that Grace indicates, only good things can result. Perhaps he can find a worthy musical doppelgänger (as his father did, in Lee Underwood) and convince Karl Berger to actually play vibes on his next album. If he can do these two things, it won't be too long before he's ushered into the halls of greatness. Perhaps then he and his father can make peace.
One of my favorite sorts of music has no real generic handle by which it can be carried into the marketplace. Informed by jazz, rock, and folk traditions, it is not specifically aligned with any of them, vibrating in the air like a mahogany hen's egg held in the grip of unseen forces. Performers capable of producing this stuff include Fred Neil, Tim Buckley, Michael Chapman, Karen Dalton, Roy Harper, Tommy Flanders, Cassandra Wilson, Tim Hardin, Bob Brown, and others. One new name to add to this list is Jeff Buckley.
Jeff is the son of the late master singer Tim Buckley, and one assumes (from the fact that his bio doesn't mention his father) that theirs was not a close relationship. On his debut, Live at Sin-e, whenever Jeff's singing became too similar to his dad's, he'd head off into that quivery direction that Robert Plant used to, singing about things like "Silver and golden carrots / Fighting for a dead dog's love." This is an incredibly annoying tendency, but it's one that Buckley seems to be utilizing less and less.
As evidenced by Grace (and a great promo EP called Peyote Radio Theatre), Buckley is feeling a bit more self-confident these days. Some of this may come from the grounding his material has been given by the extraordinary guitarist Gary Lucas, with whom he works on some tunes here. Another layer of luxuriously creative loam is put down by the arrangements of Karl Berger (best known as an avant-garde vibraphonist), and Buckley seems to flourish in this particular garden.
The songs on Grace range from the perverted pop moves of "So Real" (a composition that could have been lifted from Big Star's Third), to a pigeon-wide cover of Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah," to the exquisite tongue-pressure of "Dream Brother" (a masterpiece of pseudo East-meets-West formalism). Obnoxious tendrils of Plantism surface here and there, but Buckley follows his natural vocal inclinations more often than he tries to subvert them.
If Buckley continues to evolve in the direction that Grace indicates, only good things can result. Perhaps he can find a worthy musical doppelgänger (as his father did, in Lee Underwood) and convince Karl Berger to actually play vibes on his next album. If he can do these two things, it won't be too long before he's ushered into the halls of greatness. Perhaps then he and his father can make peace.
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