Recommendations of the Editorial team
“I love you / And I’m afraid to love you…” 50 minutes for eternity “Grace.” You can spend 50 minutes in the world of “Grace” live, if you want. No other album has ever captivated me as much as this one.
And again I find it difficult to write about this album or about music in general, but especially about these songs on “Grace.” They are all so fantastic and magical and are their own worlds, but they fit together so well, belong together, and are sometimes so stirring that I would like to take a break of one to five minutes between the pieces, even after I have been listening to this album regularly for ten years.
There are ten tracks on this album – or eleven, depending on the version. In later editions the song “Forget Her” was added as the closing track, which I personally like very much, but which Jeff Buckley himself was not happy with. Three of the songs on Grace) are cover versions: – “Corpus Christi Carol” (by Benjamin Britten), Lilac Wine (James Shelton) and Hallelujah (Leonard Cohen).
To this day, I find it very fascinating that listeners often first associate Buckley with his very Cohen cover. It seems to be the most searched tab on Ultimate Guitar. Although this version is beautiful with its pauses and angelic moments, it remains almost uninteresting to me next to Buckley’s originals like “Mojo Pin”, “Grace”, “Lover, You Should’ve Come Over”. Buckley himself repeatedly spoke in interviews about his big influences, especially Nina Simone, Led Zeppelin and Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. He himself influenced countless musicians of his generation and those who followed. Probably more than he could ever imagine.
For example, when Radiohead were in the middle of recording “The Bends” and had just failed to record “Fake Plastic Trees”, the band decided to go to a Buckley concert that evening. Thom Yorke later described how much this performance inspired him and that Buckley encouraged him to sing in falsetto. After the concert, the band was back in the studio and successfully recorded the song.
“Born again from the Rhythm,
Screaming down from heaven
Ageless, ageless
And I’m there in your arms””
For me it is not a single thing that makes the album a masterpiece, but the combination of the truly poetic lyrics that record feelings between hope and despair, love and death, the beautiful soaring guitar melodies, arrangements and chord progressions, the strings in songs like ““Last Goodbye”, the way Matt Johnson plays his drum fills or Mick Grondahl’s bass lines – at this point it should be mentioned how incredibly great his live band was. Yes, of course this album is also fantastically mixed. A lot comes together here, but these pieces are all carried by Buckley’s unique voice.
What’s impressive to me is his enormous vocal range – four octaves – as well as his vocal color, the way he sings in falsetto and pauses at the right places. But last but not least, the pure, naked emotion and energy with which he sings and brings the lyrics to life.
“I want life to be what I know it must be, if one lives it right: brilliant, intense, uncommon, agonizing and painful, weirder than weird, beautiful, an epic adventure into existence – that’s life” (from his diaries HIS OWN VOICE : the officials journals, objects & ephemera)
“Asleep in the sand, with the ocean washing over”
“Grace” remains Buckley’s only studio album. However, there are also countless other songs that were released posthumously, for example the demo recordings for his second album, which could never be recorded – “Sketches for My Sweetheart The Drunk” – or “All Flowers in Time Bend Towards The Sun”, a truly heartbreaking duet with Scottish singer and then-girlfriend of Buckley, Elizabeth Fraser (Cocteau Twins). The song “Rilkean Heart” by the Cocteau Twins from the album ““Milk & Kisses” (1996) is about their relationship.
Also worth mentioning is Buckley’s “Live at Siné » Album that lets the musician and, above all, his unique voice shine in an intimate and reduced setting. On “Live in Chicago” and other live albums you can get the “Grace” songs Admire it in a modified and longer form and hear how enthusiastic the audience is.
In May 1997, at the age of 30, Buckley died during a nighttime swimming trip. He drowned in the Wolf River, a side channel of the Mississippi River.
I am grateful for how much “Grace” has accompanied me over the past ten years and I look forward to all the future long car rides, night walks and evenings in my apartment listening to this album over and over again.
An article from the RS archives
Why does Campino think that sometimes it’s good to just keep your mouth shut? Why does he sometimes feel like a drinks delivery man? He provides the answer in our cover story about the Toten Hosen’s big farewell, exclusively in issue 06/26. And that’s not all: the magazine includes the world exclusive 7-inch single “Always just loved” – on which Sven Regener from Element of Crime also contributed. You can easily order the ROLLING STONE edition here.
