Buckley's haunting songs are mesmerizing

The Star Ledger: February 28, 1994

By Ben Horowitz

  Jeff Buckley, a unique, improvisational electric guitarist and singer, accomplished a number of rare feats during his solo performance on Saturday night at Maxwell's in Hoboken.

  When he played a lilting, chiming version of Edith Piaf's "Je N'en Connais Pas La Fin" (I Don't Know the End), the packed house stood still in utter silence. As tears filled his eyes during the final, dreamy refrain of "oh, mon amour," the song suddenly ended and the only sound before the applause was a young woman's one-word reaction: "Wow."

  It was like that during most of his set. Patrons at Maxwell's and other clubs generally talk and move around while the music is going. But Buckley-an intense eccentric with talent dripping from his fingertips-commanded the audience's complete attention.

  Meanwhile, his slow to mid-tempo, extended numbers were defying categorization.

 During "Grace," for example, his guitar changed from airy, high riffery with jazz-like chord changes to heavy, dissonant licks with a Jimi Hendrix influence. At the time his singing was shifting from falsetto chants to scats to emotional verses.

  Buckley headlined a diverse, eclectic double bill where the opening act was Kate Jacobs, a wonderful country-rock singer songwriter who remains Hoboken's best-kept secret.

  Buckley's boyish, art student-like good looks and troubled presence strongly recalled his father, the late Tim Buckley, best known for the haunting, ethereal hippie anthems on his classic 1967 folk-rock album, Goodbye and Hello.

  The elder Buckley moved to avant-garde jazz before dying from a drug overdose at the age of 28 in 1975.

  Jeff Buckley's voice is about two octaves lower than his father's, but it shares Tim's tortured intensity and experimental tendencies. Ironically, Jeff recalls meeting his father only once after Tim split from his mother in 1966, the year Jeff was born.

  Jeff, under contract with Sony/Columbia Records, could be headed for stardom, but he does seem guaranteed of at least cult status. His debut EP, Live at Sin-e, came out last year and Columbia expects to release his first full-length album in the spring.

  During the Maxwell's show, Jeff Buckley's guitar virtuosity showed a wide gamut of influences: He sounded like Jimmy Page meeting Stanley Jordan on an ominous, cloudy day.

  Buckley opened the show with an extended a capella chanting in a black spiritual style before moving into verses accompanied by jagged, dissonant, jazzy guitar riffs on "The Last Goodbye."

  "Mojo Pin" found Buckley shifting from a jazz take on the English folk-style riffs sometimes favored by Led Zeppelin into heavy, feedback-drenched segments.

  Buckley came closest to his father's sound on "Forget Her," a haunting, melodic, passionate song in a folk-jazz vein.

  Buckley's set peaked with the Piaf song, which came towards the end and was so gorgeous and refined it rendered the final two numbers anticlimactic.

  Buckley was on stage for less than an hour, but that was enough soul-searching intensity for one night. Had the set gone on much longer, it would have been like having an unnecessary, extra portion of a rich but filling delicacy.

Impressive Buckley

Now magazine: February 17, 1994

By Tim Perlich 

Submitted by Karen Pace/Steven Bodrug

Jeff Buckley, opening for Wind May Do Damage, with Rory McLeod, at Ultrasound, Sunday, February 13. Attendance: 175. Tickets: Free. Rating: NNNN (highly entertaining)

  Without fanfare, a disheveled Jeff Buckley, in an oversized new coat, took the Ultrasound stage with a confident New York spring.

  The between-set chatter of the near-capacity crowd slowly dissolved, more out of curiosity than deference. As the spindly singer/songwriter started to twiddle his pick against the strings of his low-slung Telecaster, you could see a moan beginning to take shape in his throat.

  When he finally opened his mouth, a strange, weeping howl leapt out and filled the room. People stopped drinking in mid-gulp. The club became very, very quiet-so quiet that between Buckley's breaths the only sound was the air being sucked through the ceiling vents.

  The great care he took in building his song shapes made it known that this wasn't going to be Tim Buckley's son trying to use his good family name as leverage in promoting his debut "product." Nope. Those sounds belonged solely to Jeff Buckley, and he was excreting them because it's just a natural bodily function.

  His guitar playing technique is surprisingly accomplished. Buckley strikes chords with the self-assurance of a music school grad who no longer feels obliged to drop suspended sevenths and diminished ninths just because he can. The brief time Buckley spent alongside serious slinger Gary Lucas in God's And Monsters clearly served to set him straight.

  Yet you tend to forget he's even strapped in when that voice swoops up in a piercing falsetto, then comes crashing down in waves.

  Buckley is still stretching, still testing his limits. There are moments where he flutters with a grand flourish where a simple whisper might have conveyed so much more. His banter sometimes betrays a certain greeness. You could sense the entire house cringe when he noted with surprise that there was "actual Jamaican-style jerk children in Toronto." Fortunately, quickly sensed an impending brush back and acquitted himself admirably by pleading ignorance.

  For an encore, Buckley came back with an impressive 10-minute deconstruction of Sweet Thing. It's no small task to take on a Van Morrison song-they come so thoroughly marked with Van's own personal stamp-but Buckley stylishly delivered it like something he'd written on the cab ride over. Nice one.