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.
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