Queen's Hall Review

The List: June 30, 1995

By Alastair Mabbott

JEFF BUCKLEY

Queen's Hall, Edinburgh, 20 June.

  With a mere one-and-a-half albums behind him, Jeff Buckley is casting a gargantuan shadow-even if it is only on the back wall of the Queen's Hall and comes courtesy of an ankle-level spotlight. Until you realise how much work he's still got to do before he fulfils his potential, it can seem like Jeff's already a towering colossus. There's tremendous raw talent here, presence and power. But there are also a lot of opportunity missed, others pursued beyond decent limits and, beneath his easy-going and likeable stage presence, a sense that he's still looking for the coontrol and hair-fine judgment he needs before he can be truly great.

  Which is not to say that he doesn't have fleeting moments of brilliance. These usually occur in his own songs-anything from the first half of Grace and a few new ones unveiled tonight-though even they sometimes suffer from an overdose of Buckley's flamboyant self-expression.

  He tells us a joke that suggests he's aware of at least some of the pitfalls of his position. "How many Jeff Buckleys does it take to change a lightbulb?" The answer goes something like "No problem, Jeff, I'll fix it, you just sit there. Want some peanuts? A Coke?"

  Perhaps to break out of that trap of fawning indulgence, or to piss off the punter who yells for his dad's "Song To The Siren", he leads his band into two gnarly grunge-outs. They're shit. And the cage remains unrattled. At the end, he struggles with "Hallelujah", forgetting the words and visibly straining to put across a song that remains just out of his grasp. But, like Tinkerbell, he's carried through it by the audience, who see a victory not a messy draw. Closing with Chilton's "Kangaroo" is a risky move, too-the original was so bent out of shape that there's little for Jeff to do but dick around with it in slightly different ways.

  The thing is that there's enough evidence that Jeff Buckley will mature into a brilliant performer, and it's hard to leave here tonight totally disheartened. This man's shortcomings hold as much promise as most people's highlights, but it's going to be a long-if interesting-slog.