Sunday, June 27, 2004
June 26: Jeff Buckley - Grace
Why do I own this? I bought this sometime in college, when the cult of Buckley was at its height.
Everybody knows Jeff Buckley's story, right? His dad was a tortured folk singer who died young, he couldn't escape the gift of music, decided to perform, put out one album (this one), then drowned in the Mississippi River while working on the follow-up. Apparently, he just walked straight into the river and disappeared under the water before anybody knew what was going on.
Now everybody from Guster to emo bands cite Buckley as a huge influence. That's what makes listening to this album frustrating: you hear a lot of things that later performers stole from Buckley, but because you heard the thieves first, this sounds ripped-off. In fact, my brother wandered in as I was listening to it and remarked that it sounded like "weird Ryan Adams." The album is extremely uneven, to say the least; I was ready to sell by track 5, but then he gives you the one-two punch of "Hallelujah" (a truly gorgeous song) and "Lover, You Should've Come Over," then follows that up with a falsetto rendition of a hymn and a full-on rocker. The man's voice is great — he has a really delicate falsetto most of the time — but it's not always used right. The result is that half of this album is brilliant, and half is crap. Buckley could have been a great talent; alas, now we'll never know. But like Nick Drake or Jim Morrison, I'm sure we'll see CDs of odds, ends, leftovers, and live tracks well into the next century.
Keep or Sell? Keep. But like the Wallflowers' CD, this one barely escapes the "rip two tracks and sell" route.
Everybody knows Jeff Buckley's story, right? His dad was a tortured folk singer who died young, he couldn't escape the gift of music, decided to perform, put out one album (this one), then drowned in the Mississippi River while working on the follow-up. Apparently, he just walked straight into the river and disappeared under the water before anybody knew what was going on.
Now everybody from Guster to emo bands cite Buckley as a huge influence. That's what makes listening to this album frustrating: you hear a lot of things that later performers stole from Buckley, but because you heard the thieves first, this sounds ripped-off. In fact, my brother wandered in as I was listening to it and remarked that it sounded like "weird Ryan Adams." The album is extremely uneven, to say the least; I was ready to sell by track 5, but then he gives you the one-two punch of "Hallelujah" (a truly gorgeous song) and "Lover, You Should've Come Over," then follows that up with a falsetto rendition of a hymn and a full-on rocker. The man's voice is great — he has a really delicate falsetto most of the time — but it's not always used right. The result is that half of this album is brilliant, and half is crap. Buckley could have been a great talent; alas, now we'll never know. But like Nick Drake or Jim Morrison, I'm sure we'll see CDs of odds, ends, leftovers, and live tracks well into the next century.
Keep or Sell? Keep. But like the Wallflowers' CD, this one barely escapes the "rip two tracks and sell" route.
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