By David Toop
Condemned, like any other celebrity offspring to be endlessly compared to a notorious parent, Jeff Buckley will have none of it. His relationship with his father, Tim Buckley, amounted to a total of nine days; after Tim died from the shock of strong heroin snorted at an LA party in 1975, his eight-year-old son did not even experience the necessary emotional right of passage of attending the funeral.
Comparisons are not just inevitable because of an unhealthy fascination with children who survived the drugs and chaos of a late sixties upbringing. Tim Buckley open out a territory for folk-rock and singer/songwriter guitarists that was located on a far stranger planet than the benign James Taylor or the irresistible pop of The Mamas and The Papas. Now his son has been standing up on a stage with only an electric guitar a voice and raw nerve sheltering him from his audience, working Greenwich Village coffee houses and exposing painful nerves.
But from there, and from two genetically linked and uncannily haunted faces, the similarities diverge. Fast approaching 30, Jeff has played some very small, very select and very packed concerts here, and released an EP Live at Sin-e (Big Cat) which follows its own twisting path. As with all the other recent singer/songwriters, there are strong echoes of the Sixties. Traces of Jimi Hendrix, Arthur Lee's Love, Indian music and free jazz emerge, probably absorbed from the influence of his mother and stepfather, just to confound glib theories, rather than his biological father.
For his debut album, Grace (Columbia), Buckley reworks "Mojo Pin" from the first EP, but adds sharp new corners with a three-piece band. This is risky stuff, out on an open edge which can drop over into histrionics, sometimes shouted, sometimes interminable and sometimes voicing sentiments which only a teenager can opine without embarrassment. But Buckley pulls it off. The comparisons with Tim are unlikely to disappear; the musical demons chased by both are terrifyingly similar. But Grace has the intensity of the moment. Jeff should be judged on his own musical merits.
Comparisons are not just inevitable because of an unhealthy fascination with children who survived the drugs and chaos of a late sixties upbringing. Tim Buckley open out a territory for folk-rock and singer/songwriter guitarists that was located on a far stranger planet than the benign James Taylor or the irresistible pop of The Mamas and The Papas. Now his son has been standing up on a stage with only an electric guitar a voice and raw nerve sheltering him from his audience, working Greenwich Village coffee houses and exposing painful nerves.
But from there, and from two genetically linked and uncannily haunted faces, the similarities diverge. Fast approaching 30, Jeff has played some very small, very select and very packed concerts here, and released an EP Live at Sin-e (Big Cat) which follows its own twisting path. As with all the other recent singer/songwriters, there are strong echoes of the Sixties. Traces of Jimi Hendrix, Arthur Lee's Love, Indian music and free jazz emerge, probably absorbed from the influence of his mother and stepfather, just to confound glib theories, rather than his biological father.
For his debut album, Grace (Columbia), Buckley reworks "Mojo Pin" from the first EP, but adds sharp new corners with a three-piece band. This is risky stuff, out on an open edge which can drop over into histrionics, sometimes shouted, sometimes interminable and sometimes voicing sentiments which only a teenager can opine without embarrassment. But Buckley pulls it off. The comparisons with Tim are unlikely to disappear; the musical demons chased by both are terrifyingly similar. But Grace has the intensity of the moment. Jeff should be judged on his own musical merits.
