The Gaurdian: September 5, 1994
By Andrew Smith
As Jeff Buckley ambled lugubriously on to the stage, the faces of pretty much everyone in the capacity crowd betrayed the same thought-"How much he looks like his father!"
Dad was Tim Buckley, who, although never rising above cult status in his lifetime, has, since his his death from a drug overdose in 1975, come to assume a mythic status in the annals of pop. His greatest legacy, the achingly beautiful Song To The Siren, which was introduced to a new generation by the Cocteau Twins in 1984 and has been covered by many others since, is widely regarded as one of the finest pop songs ever written.
For a young singer and song writer such as Jeff, having to live with the Buckley name must at times seem a terrible burden. The surprise is that he appears able to pull the performing off so comfortably. His debut LP, the aptly titled Grace, is a consummate work, evincing a maturity and poise that Jeff's tender years really give him no right to possess.
In a live setting, though, it is his extraordinary voice that impresses you first. It's reminiscent of Doors singer Jim Morrison in the lower registers, and it rises to the kind of liquid, slightly tremulous, falsetto that made Billie Holiday famous. The truth is that you don't get many of these to the pound. Backed by a traditional bass-drums-guitar line-up, Buckley makes good use of this God-given voice.
Most of the songs are love songs, reflective and melancholic in tone, often rising to impassioned, Piafesque climaxes-the kind of thing that generally seems crude in the hands of rock performers. But there is nothing crude in the way Buckley sings. Only once, during the encore, an excessively long, free-form reading of the Big Star classic, Kangaroo, was there any hint of indulgence. Even here, if one stuck with it, there were pearls to be plucked. Anyway you listen to it, Jeff Buckley is an exciting and unexpected find.
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