Jeff Buckley – Grace

In what I can only assume is yet another grand example of my total ignorance of popular music from a time I should have been listening to it, I totally missed the Jeff Buckley boat. About 8 years ago, I heard a friend play a song called “Hallelujah”, and since this was a particularly good musician, I wondered aloud if he had written it, and of course he didn’t, but I didn’t bother to ask who did. A year after that, I saw the film Shrek and heard the John Cale version of the same song, and again loved the song but didn’t think to pursue the author or even the performer’s identity. Then, years and years after that, I was at my local Starbucks and the Rufus Wainwright version played, and I listened and was again amazed (only I didn’t remember it being so whiny), and THIS time I was curious. I looked up the song and all its cover versions and I discovered 2 musicians whose discovery were years past due for me: Leonard Cohen, the actual author of the song, and Jeff Buckley, the dude who made the song famous. Though I’ve been slowly but surely collecting items from Cohen’s rather large discography and falling in love with each one, there was only one album to show for my interest in Jeff Buckley, which is the one I’m now writing about, in case you don’t read blog titles:

If you’re like I was a couple of months ago and never heard Jeff Buckley, may I offer one piece of advice going in: you must lose ALL concept of manliness and machismo, listening to this album unprepared for its lilting vocals and silky smooth instrumentation may actually cause you to grow a uterus. If you are already in possession of one, congratulations, you’re already a Jeff Buckley fan.

Buckley’s voice is something that sails straight in from Heaven on wings of eastern-influenced vocal scales and lungs that just don’t quit, all hidden behind a set of teeth that frighten ALL the children. If you could imagine Thom York (singer for Radiohead) and Matthew Bellamy (singer for Muse) combined their voices and were also women, that’s about close to what it sounds like. Hence my advice, if you are not prepared to have your balls drop off from listening to this stuff, you’re going to miss the point entirely and probably wind up making fun of it (like my roommates did when I was watching one of his concert videos on the livingroom TV).

Jeff Buckley knows this about his voice, so the opening of the first song, “Mojo Pin“, is an extended organ chord and Jeff’s voice (also an organ in the anatomical sense) playing on forever as some fancy guitar is brought in. From the near-whisper of the first few verses to the still-melodic screaming in the song’s rockin’ breakdowns, it’s quite apparent that the entire album is based around that magical singing.

However, that doesn’t stop the rest of the band, particularly with the next track, “Grace“, Jeff’s guitar work is precise and the dude knows some really awesome chords, and the rest of his band is a top-shelf bunch of young musicians. “Grace” also introduces a certain singing crescendo that Muse fans will be very accustomed to, and that is one that ends with the Very, Very High Note. It’s quite the thing, I assure you.

After another awesome original, entitled “The Last Goodbye”, we’re introduced to the first of 2 excellent covers in the album, the Nina Simone version of James Shelton’s “Lilac Wine“, which is a beautiful song (one of my friends, a long-time Buckley fan, cites it as her favorite song) featuring some impressive jazz guitar chords. I consider it a feat worth noting when a guitarist can actually make a solo clean electric guitar work extremely well as the only accompaniment to singing, so please note that I am noting that here.

The next song is actually my favorite of the original songs on the album, “So Real“, which is really reminiscent of “Punchdrunk Lovesick Singalong” by Radiohead on their My Iron Lung EP, unless I’m just going crazy. “So Real” contains a really awesome breakdown with distorted bass guitar as well, and I am all about distorted bass.

Then comes the song I was waiting for, the “ultimate cover” of Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah“. Jeff’s version certainly does deserve the praise heaped upon it. It’s just Jeff and the electric guitar, and it’s quite excellent. The only thing I would dare take away from that cover is that it doesn’t contain my favorite stanza, the last one, but considering the original has something like 15 or 17 stanzas that Cohen changes up himself from time to time, I can surely forgive. I found out, a little bit after obtaining Grace, that Buckley’s cover of “Hallelujah” became the number 1 most downloaded song on iTunes, following a cover of that cover by a kid with dreadlocks on that awful American singing program. I can only surmise that, after seeing the stoner’s version of the song, people were clamoring to find a version that’s actually good.

We’re then treated to a lovely break-up song called “Lover, You Should’ve Come Over“, which features a gospel choir made entirely up of Jeff Buckley being multi-tracked to bring the song home. I think this is my favorite song of the originals as far as lyrics go.

Then the third of the covers on this album is “Corpus Christi Carol“, which is a really good song, no doubt, but definitely my least favorite on the album. It might be that we’ve already been treated to 2 slow songs that are mostly just Jeff and a guitar, so to have a 3rd one waiting at the end of an album of only 10 songs kind of kills the effect. It could also be that the singing is actually too feminine, but I am not stating that as a fact because I heeded my own warning about what this album does to people.

It could also be that the next song, “Eternal Life“, is so rockin’ that I can’t wait to skip to it. So why put a lite-metal song not only right after a really feminine soliloquy, but also at the tail-end of an album that sounds nothing like it? I dunno, but it works! I guess the song may have been a bit incongruous if it were placed earlier in the album, but I’m glad it’s there anyway. Once again present is distorted bass, I just wanted to throw that out there (so cool).

Finally, “Dream Brother” takes the album out in a very distinctly Eastern-influenced flavor. Really, one could hardly ask for a better song to end an album with, as it is a strong track indeed, and it meanders just enough to where one doesn’t just wonder where the rest of the album went (10-tracks-or-less albums should always heed the risk of sounding incomplete with an incorrect end song). Interestingly enough, “Dream Brother” is the song Buckley used to open his shows on his “Mystery White Boy” tour.

It’s always an unfortunate thing for an artist to die before reaching their full potential, or at the very least, a sizable discography. Jeff Buckley is quite possibly the worst case of died-too-soon that I have ever seen. For one, he only has Grace as far as full albums go, and for two, his death was a complete and total accident. No drugs, no alcohol-induced-vomit-choking-upon, no guns, knives, depression, or anything. The guy drowned in a lake. That is an injustice that really makes you think… about how much it sucks to drown in a lake. Still, if one were given only one shot at creating an album that would touch the lives of others and earn the love and reverence of the masses and one particularly sleepy blogger, it would be hard to do any better with your life than this album.

So, gentle readers, do yourself a favor and get in touch with your girly, emasculated side with a copy of Grace. If you’re crazy like me, you should pick up the Legacy Edition, as it features a second disc of some interesting B-sides, including a cover of… of all things… a Screamin’ Jay Hawkins song called “Alligator Wine”. It’s worth the price of admission just to hear him try to emulate the screamiest voodoo man in all of music.

Stay tuned for tomorrow’s entry, which just might be written after a proper night’s sleep this time!