Mercury Lounge announcement

The New York Daily News: December 26, 1995

By Jim Farber

New Year's Eve isn't only about revelry. It's also about prayer-a time to mark the change in your life with hope.

  The holiday's second meaning finds its perfect voice in a New Year's concert by Jeff Buckley at Mercury Lounge. With his glistening falsetto and daring range, Buckley sings like a troubled angel, a fallen figure of romance.

  In concert, Buckley rates as one of the few pop singers to offer elaborate vocal improvisation, the kind more common to jazz singers. While his far-flung vocals impress on his 1994 debut album, "Grace," onstage he goes much further, fusing the wildness of Robert Plant and the tragedy of Edith Piaf with the hypnotic religion of Van Morrison.

  Look for Buckley to serve up most of "Grace" in concert, plus some surprises. Along the way, you can expect Buckley to offer something more than a holiday toast. You can also expect a clear expression of faith.

  10:30 at the Mercury Lounge, 217 E. Houston St. 212-260-4700. Tix: $20.

Buckley's Exotic, Tasty Brew

New York Daily News: December 19, 1994

By Jim Farber, Daily News Staff Writer

  ROCK 'N' ROLL HAS never been big on improvisational singing. When it comes to free-form soloing, the guitar largely commands center stage.

  Not so in the music of Jeff Buckley. At his Irving Plaza show Saturday, Buckley let his voice roam over notes, and dance up scales, with the exploration of a jazz singer.

  During elaborate passages, Buckley brought his three-piece band to a halt while he ventured down a cappella alleys, gracefully taking the listener further and further out there.

  You couldn't blame some listeners for not wanting to follow. Live, as on record, Buckley proved to be an aquired taste. He's the musical equivalent of anchovies-either you crave them or run from their very mention.

  In Buckley's case, his music contains several ingredients that can trip listeners up: wild tempo changes, unusual keys, and his intensely dramatic vibrato. When Buckley sings, his voice shivers with emotion, fluttering into a falsetto you can find either overwrought or enchanting.

  Live, Buckley pushed his instrument to its limit. Many songs from his debut LP, "Grace," stretched on for 8-10 minutes; his encore lasted 15. Still, in both haunting songs like "Lilac Wine," and raging ones like "Eternal Life," Buckley gave his improvisations momentum.

  It worked best in "Mojo Pin." Here Buckley's vocal flourishes alluded to a remarkable range of singers-from Billie Holiday to the late avant-garde vocalist Klaus Nomi. True, at his most affected Buckley could sound like Tiny Tim, but more often he came closer to Robert Plant, while retaining his own style.

  Like Plant, Buckley's music draws heavily on folk-rock and Arabic influences. But his most striking live piece anchored itself on the blues. In "Lover, You Should Have Come Over," the performer showed his greatest talents, to combine operatic vocals with firm songwriting hooks. The result may not be the easiest thing to get into. But once you do, you may have trouble getting back out.

New York Daily News

Aug. 16, 1994
By Billy Altman
Submitted by Sai

On Guitar Firing Line, The New Buckley Is a Genuine Radical
Jammin' Jeff follows his unique path to success

  Few singer/songwriters have shown up in recent years displaying as much raw talent-and mystique-as Jeff Buckley, who's appearing tonight at Wetlands.
  Buckley emerged from New York's underground cafe scene in 1992, shaking up audiences with his electric guitar and soaring, high pitched vocals that seemed more at home in a hard-rock arena than an intimate cabaret. and his dreamlike, impressionistic tales about love and longing sail across so many stylistic waters, from rock and folk to classical and jazz, that his music has been nearly impossible to categorize.
  Which, it turns out, is very much the way Buckley, now 27, wanted it.
  "I tried to choose an avenue where I lived in the big music eye without a tangible label product,  and I wanted to do it in places where people really go and converge," he says. "So the cabaret route made perfect sense to me. I wanted to be like Nina Simone. And as far as the directions my music goes in, well, that's America-Kabuki theater to 'Wonderama.' If I was a painter, I'd say my medium was garage bands, y'know?"
  Well no, not exactly. Suffice to say that when a musician tells you his influences include "the usual-Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple, Black Sabbath, Tuesday Weld, Julie Christie, Kim Novak," you get the sense that such songs as the blues-from-Venus "Mojo Pin" and the raga-rocking "Last Goodbye" are grounded in a rather, shall we say, individual view of the universe-musical and otherwise.
  Buckley, the son of the late '60s singer/songwriter Tim Buckley, grew up in Southern California and played guitar there with a number of rock and reggae bands in the 1980s. He says moving to the lower East Side in 1990 helped him focus on his own music.
  "I was very unhappy in California," he says. "I felt I needed to strip away my identity and just be nobody and discover who I was and who I wasn't. Coming to New York was like having a completely open door to everything. Because of all the disparate lives that get mashed together here, you're always aware of your own difference. And since people in New York both accept anything and expect everything, you can really try anything and everything."
  To that end, Buckley took up a residency at the club Sin-e in the East Village, where, besides spending many a night as "a human jukebox" ('Sex Pistols, Judy Garland-anything people threw at me, I tried'), his own unique songs and performance style began drawing attention. The local buzz was sufficient that Buckley was hotly pursued by a number of record companies and eventually signed with Columbia, who'll be releasing his debut album, "Grace" this fall.
  Still, no matter how much acclaim he garners, don't expect Buckley to believe the hype. "I'm very mistrustful of everything outside the music itself," he says. "Even if there's a place reserved for me in the 'music business,' I don't think I'd really feel comfortable there. I'd rather people just hear the force of music in me and do what they will with it."
  Wetlands is at 161 Hudson. Buckley is part of a "Best of Sin-e" show, which starts at 7:30. Tix are $12. Info: (212) 966-4225. (Billy Altman is a freelance writer.)