Jeff Buckley

Table of Contents

Albums

Live At Sin-é (1993, reissued 2003)

Live At Sin-é cover

  1. “Be Your Husband”
  2. “Lover, You Should’ve Come Over”
  3. “Mojo Pin”
  4. [Monologue: Duane Eddy, Songs For Lovers]
  5. “Grace”
  6. [Monologue: Reverb, The Doors]
  7. “Strange Fruit”
  8. “Night Flight”
  9. [Monologue: Fabulous Time For A Guinness]
  10. “Last Goodbye”
  11. “Twelfth of Never”
  12. [Monologue: Café Days]
  13. [Monologue: Eternal Life]
  14. “Eternal Life”
  15. “Just Like A Woman”
  16. [Monologue: False Start, Apology, Miles Davis]
  17. “Calling You”
  18. [Monologue: Nusrat, He’s My Elvis]
  19. “Yeh Jo Halka Halka Saroor Hai”
  20. [Monologue: I’m A Ridiculous Person]
  21. “If You See Her, Say Hello”
  22. [Monologue: Matt Dillon, Hollies, Classic Rock Radio]
  23. “Dink’s Song”
  24. [Monologue: Musical Chairs]
  25. “Drown In My Own Tears”
  26. [Monologue: The Suckiest Water]
  27. “The Way Young Lovers Do”
  28. [Monologue: Walk Through Walls]
  29. “Je N’en Connais Pas la Fin”
  30. “I Shall Be Released”
  31. “Sweet Thing”
  32. [Monologue: Good Night, Bill]
  33. “Hallelujah”

“My fading voice sings of love.”

A four-song EP turned into a two-disc–, 34-track–, two and a half hour–long long-player featuring the sounds of Jeff, his Telecaster, and not much else. There are only about five Buckley originals present, and they’re all on the first disc, but it hardly matters; like Johnny Cash, once Jeff Buckley does your song, it is no longer your song. Okay, that isn’t entirely the case here; he doesn’t steal “Strange Fruit” away from Billie Holiday (or even come close), but he certainly transforms it into something else of his own. The same words evoke different emotions. Or maybe they evoke the same ones in a different way; I dunno. It isn’t that he imbues them with ingenius new arrangements or anything, it’s just the starkness of the performances and of his voice. He also does straight-faced covers of everyone from Led Zeppelin to Nusrat Ali Fateh Khan.

The focus is on his voice, as you’d expect; a song like “Mojo Pin” isn’t held together by its melody as much as the extended notes and pulled punches that build up its climax (less intense here because of the MIA rhythm section, but it’s more the journey than the destination anyway). You can criticize him for being showy and pretentious, but he uses his voice in a way that a melisma-filled Mariah Carey album is too impatient to consider; the melodies don’t resonate at first even on the familiar songs—his wispy rendition of Dylan’s “If You See Her, Say Hello” came and went because I wasn’t consciously paying attention to it—but it’s music that deeply rewards close listening because of its sincerity and emotion (incidentally, my favorite is the lullaby “Je N’en Connais Pas la Fin”).

The recordings also take a refreshingly bootleg-like laissez faire approach to the editing, sparing us not one false start or “Smells Like Teen Spirit” parody. The audience is also a bit too quiet (like most unproduced soundboard recordings), but all of this makes the show feel more intimate. There are several “Monologue” tracks that are basically just Buckley goofing off between songs. There aren’t many live albums that still feel lively after the labels get a hold of them, so this was a pleasant change of pace. I also like how the album puts Jeff in a different context; Mystery White Boy was a solid live album that had some great performances, but it didn’t sound drastically different from anything on Grace. The show at Sin-é gives us Buckley and little else, so the album fills a nice void by providing that.

—J.C. Fields

Last modified on Sunday, December 5, 2021.