Jeff Buckley

Incomplete at the time of his death, Jeff Buckley's second LP mirrors his contradictions as an artist -- half tunes that were bolder and more glossily produced than anything from Grace (highlights: "Yard of Blonde Girls," "Everybody Here Wants You") and half 4-tracked scraps and demos ("New Year's Prayer," "I Know We Could Be So Happy Baby"). It's suspect whether the release is any homage to Buckley's meticulous nature as a recording artist (especially failed experiments like "Your Flesh Is So Nice"), making for a collection that is often chilling, occasionally brilliant and ultimately mixed.

They run through this collection like a string of loosely buried land mines, images and
aphorisms with the prescient sting of epitaph: "This way of life is so devised/To snuff out
the mind that moves" ("The Sky Is a Landfill"); "I am a railroad track abandoned" ("Opened
Once"); "I'm not with you/Not of you" ("I Know We Could Be So Happy Baby [If We Wanted
to Be]"). But Jeff Buckley's death by drowning, a year ago this month in Memphis,... More >