147. Jeff Buckley, "Grace"

 


Like the vast majority of other people, the only Jeff Buckley song I had ever heard was his gorgeous and aching cover of Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah," a cover so ubiquitous that I was in my 40s before I learned Buckley's wasn't the original version.  I had heard of this album, of course, but never heard it, and I guess I was expecting more broody, guitar-based singer-songwriter stuff.

Boy was I wrong.  This album is WILD.  I'm not even sure WHAT it is.  It's kind of bombastic orchestral rock like Muse or Queen but somehow weirder?  Take the title song, track two.  It starts out deceptively simple, but quickly veers off with Buckley showing off his truly amazing vocal range (supposedly four octaves, which is a lot).  The melody dodges and weaves in unexpected ways, nodding at jazz one minute and maybe Andrew Lloyd Webber the next?  "Last Goodbye," the second single released after the title track, shows off more of Buckley's voice and the driving, rythmic guitar that underlies a lot of this album.

"Eternal Life" is almost grunge, with Buckley adopting a kind of Anthony Kiedis sneer.  And then there's "Dream Brother," a trippy, Eastern-flavored song that also draws on prog, moody and dreamy as the title.  Like a lot of the songs, there's a lot of imagery that could be read as alluding to death.  This is all more than a little creepy considering that Buckley famously drowned in the Mississippi River when he was just 30 years old.  From "Dream Brother":

Ah do you meet the one I love
and smell the one who loves you
Dream brother, dream brother, dream, dream
dream asleep in the sand with the ocean washing over

From "Last Goodbye":

Kiss me, please kiss me
But kiss me out of desire, babe, and not consolation
You know it makes me so angry 'cause i know that in time
I'll only make you cry, this is our last goodbye

From "Grace":

There's the moon asking to stay
Long enough for the clouds to fly me away
Oh, it's my time coming,
I'm not afraid
Afraid to die

Creepy, huh?  Buckley mostly flew under the radar while he was alive, but this album was discovered and praised by everyone from David Bowie to Lana Del Rey.  He must have made a huge impact on other musicians, especially, because I have never heard of anyone having this many tribute songs written about them.

So did I like this album?  No I did not.  Would it be at number 147 if Buckley hadn't suffered a tragic and early death?  I doubt it.  Maybe it's one of those things that requires repreated listens to finally sink in and then I'd love it but I have 146 more albums, so, sorry Jeff.  RIP.

Does this album deserve to be in the Top 500? Do I want to argue with David Bowie?  If he says it is, then it is.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

103. De La Soul, "Three Feet High And Rising"

Image
  Sorry for the service interruption!  Monday I had, like, work stuff to do and yesterday I was picking my wife up at the airport and they lost her bag and we had to file a claim about that and by the time I got home it was well into my Work Hours and you know, I'm just sorry.  (This was tail end of quite a journey for my wife that found her taking off in Ireland and landing in Newark, New Jersey, and then sitting in a plane for almost three hours and then the flight just getting cancelled and then staying in the Courtyard by Marriott in downtown Newark, NJ [not recommended, she says] and then getting on a flight to SFO at 6:30 am and finally getting back here a solid 14 hours later than expected.) Speaking of the greater New York City metropolitan area, a group of kids from Amityville, Long Island, got together in 1988 and started making songs and released this album, one of the best in hip hop or any other genre, in 1989.  De La have been called the "Beatles of hip hop"
Read more

3. Joni Mitchell, "Blue"

Image
  Do you want the good news or the meh news first?  The good news is that this album is better than the other Joni Mitchell albums we've seen , or at least better for me.  I hated one of them and barely tolerated the other, so I was not expecting to like this, and after three listens yesterday, it was not as bad as I'd feared it would be.  The meh news?  I still don't love Joni Mitchell and I don't particularly like this album. Obviously, since it's the number 3 out of the Top 500 albums ever made, a lot of people feel differently.  Pitchfork called it "possibly the most gutting break-up album ever made," which may be true, who knows, but if it is it's about breaking up with a whole series of dudes, from Graham Nash to James Taylor to some guy named Carey.  (In Pitchfork's estimation, this is the 86th best album of the 1970s, so not exactly in number 3 overall territory). One thing that bugs me is Joni Mitchell's voice, which I find kind of g
Read more

1. Marvin Gaye, "What’s Going On"

Image
  500 albums later and we're out of albums.  This album was number 6 on the last iteration of the Rolling Stone list and has now moved up to number 1 (displacing Sgt. Pepper , which was the last album to hold that spot).  I think it's a lovely album with maybe three absolutely incredible songs, a fair amount of average-to-good, and some not great songs.  I'm not a voter and will never be a voter but I just don't think this is the best album of all time. In fact, I would be perfectly fine with this list if they just sawed off the top 3 and left the rest as is: 1. Stevie Wonder, Songs in the Key of Life 2. Beatles, Abbey Road 3. Nirvana, Nevermind 4. Fleetwood Mac, Rumours And so forth.  But let's take this album on its own merits. The first of the three absolute bangers is the title track, "What's Going On," the scene-setter for the rest of the album, a loose concept album that's told from the point of view of a Vietnam vet returning to a country th
Read more