Hatfield puts on full-throttle show in homecoming

The Boston Globe: May 30, 1995

By Steve Morse, GLOBE STAFF

  Juliana Hatfield wasn't joking. When she promised to rock more on this tour, she meant it. She headed in that direction on her new album, "Only Everything," and she steered down a similar high-decibel, guitar-rocking path last night at the sold-out Avalon club, where 1,500 fans caught a full-throttle show that cast aside any notion of her being a shy, innocent waif.

  Some songs needed more melody, and some would have profited from a better vocal mix, but Hatfield could not be accused of taking it easy in her homecoming appearance at the largest club in town. She'll do it again tonight (tickets still remain); and the openers will again be Jeff Buckley (son of famed 60s folkie Tim Buckley) and Bostonians Cold Water Flat, who each had moments of high, if not consistent, intensity.

  Hatfield, a Berklee College of Music graduate by way of Duxbury, has not sold as many records as expected with "Only Everything," which fell to no. 190 on the Billboard charts last week (after seven weeks of release). Acts such as Hatfield and Belly were supposed to be the next big modern-rock success stories (Belly even made the cover of Rolling Stone), but so far it hasn't happened.

  Still, there's no shame in selling out Avalon-and there was no shame in last night's performance. In an anti-fashion statement, Hatfield emerged wearing a basic white t-shirt and bluejeans (looking as if she'd just left an auto body shop), but she played with a slashing drive that prompted some frenzied moshing up front. She said little between songs, but the music said it for her-keenly high-pitched vocals amid dense slabs of her guitar. She was aided by her regular rhythm section-drummer Todd Phillips, bassist Dean Fisher and two fine new members in second guitarist Ed Slanker and keyboardist Lisa Mednick.

  The new musicians helped flesh out the sound, which had a hammer-down energy from the start with "Idols"and "What a Life." Hatfield's girlish voice was overwhelmed at times by the volume, but showed increased power from previous visits. She ignited the mosh pit with "Fleur de Lys" and "Congratulation," with its spat-out line: "I don't know what I like, only what I don't." Deadline pressure made it impossible to catch her entire show, but her continued improvement was obvious.

  Buckley's hour-long set with a four-piece band was filled with extremes; some positive, some not. At tines he sang with far too much arch solemnity, sounding pretentiously like a reedy, cut-rate version of the Doors' Jim Morrison. Buckley was much better when he picked up the tempo on a surprise, punky cover of the MC5's "Kick Out the Jams' and on the radio hit, "Last Goodbye," where he played tasty slide guitar.

  Boston trio Cold Water Flat had many strong moments, though not enough strong songs. Still, singer Paul Janovitz sang with mounting confidence. And the closing "Magnetic North Pole" (the band's radio single) suggested that high potential remains.

Jeff Buckley mesmerizes with audacious style

The Boston Globe: October 25, 1994

By Paul Robicheau SPECIAL TO THE GLOBE

Music Review: Jeff Buckley with Brenda Kahn 

At: The Charles Playhouse, last night

  "His songs are exquisitely controlled: quiet, complex mosaics of powerful, electric sound...The voice-crisp, full of strength and character-can soar, yet remain tender and delicate." So read the jacket to Tim Buckley's 1966 debut. The same could be said of "Grace," the first album from his son Jeff. The younger Buckley doesn't sound very much like his father, but he shares his eccentric spirit, and isn't looking back.

  Jeff Buckley mesmerized an an audience of 350 at the Charles Playhouse last night, opening a national tour with a stunning set that proved just how audacious, fragile and original he is. Stylistically, it comes as no surprise that the first album Buckley owned was Led Zeppelin's "Physical Graffiti." But from that base, he wove visceral dynamics with a grunge-like passion and tightrope control, not only in luminous guitar timbres, but a quavering falsetto that was only more commanding in concert.

  Looking a bit disheveled in an untucked flannel shirt with dangling key ring, Buckley wasted no time in reaching powerful extremes with opener "Mojo Pin" (which exploded out of a Hare Kirshna-like moan) and "So Real," the one song for which he chose an acoustic guitar-only to rub it into his amp for a feedback solo.

  But it was the New York-based artist's malleable voice that impressed most. At times Buckley suggested Freddie Mercury as an avant-garde garage rocker, his falsetto weaving like a dragonfly in Nina Simone's "Lilac Tree," Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah" (a solo final encore where one could hear a pin drop) and a daring a cappella ad-lib where he lived a lifetime alone in the line "Nobody knows how deep my love for you really goes."

  Buckley's arrangements had an eerie sliding quality with a raw punch around the corner in songs like "Last Goodbye," and both were expertly shadowed by his three-piece band. "Dream Brother" began with drummer Matt Johnson tapping his snare like a tabla before bursting into a full-bore release, with Buckley rearing his head and flourishing through power chords.

  But just as Buckley could build a song to a banshee wail (as he did in "Grace," displaying angst when he dropped his pick and lashed into the chords with his thumb, breaking a string), he could caress a tender thought like those in "Lover, You Should've Come Over." This night showed the growth of a talent.

  Brenda Kahn, another streetwise New Yorker, also tested a new band and songs from an upcoming second album. She came off like a female Lou Reed in "She's A Yellow Sun," and engaged in a street poem which kept pausing on the line "I don't want the apple in his mouth." But her singing had an annoying quality; she was overmatched in voice and originality on this night.

Jeff Buckley Glimpsed

The Boston Globe: February 25, 1994
By Steve Morse: GLOBE STAFF

  Highly touted singer-songwriter Jeff Buckley-the son of noted '60s folk-poet Tim Buckley-played three local club shows last week. I caught him at the Plough & Stars and was impressed only in parts. He sings with raw, untrammeled emotion, but many of his songs meander indulgently and suffered from a generic tortured-artist syndrome.